Speaker: Marcus Sperling (Yau Center, Southeast U.)
Title: Magnetic quivers, Higgs branches, and 6d N=(1,0) theories
Abstract: The physics of M5 branes on an A or D-type ALE singularity exhibits a variety of phenomena that introduce additional massless degrees of freedom. There are tensionless strings whenever two M5 branes coincide. These systems do not admit a low-energy Lagrangian description so new techniques are desirable to shed light on the physics of these phenomena. The 6-dimensional N=(1,0) world-volume theory on the M5 branes is composed of massless vector, tensor, and hyper multiplets, and has two branches of the vacuum moduli space where either the scalar fields in the tensor or hyper multiplets receive vacuum expectation values. Focusing on the Higgs branch of the low-energy theory, a new Higgs branch arises whenever a BPS-string becomes tensionless. Consequently, a single theory admits a multitude of Higgs branches depending on the types of tensionless strings in the spectrum.In this talk, I will review the “magnetic quiver” formalism for M5 branes on A or D-type singularities, introduced in arXiv:1904.12293 and 1912.02773. This technique allows to describe the 6d N=(1,0) Higgs branches over any point of the tensor branch in a concise and effective manner by means of 3d N=4 Coulomb branches of the magnetic quivers.Thereafter, I will extend the setup by allowing for non-trivial boundary conditions on the ALE spaces. Using negatively charged branes in the dual Type IIA brane configurations, I will demonstrate that exciting Higgs branch geometries can be uncovered by using magnetic quivers. For example, a nilpotent orbit closure of E6 and F4. This is part is based on arXiv:2208.07279.
Date & Time: 3:00 PM, Sep 14, 2022.
Video: Link