A new AdS 4/CFT 3 dual with extended SUSY and a spectral flow

Abstract

We construct a new AdS_4 background in Type IIB supergravity by means of a non-Abelian T-duality transformation on the Type IIA dual of ABJM. The analysis of probe and particle-like branes suggests a dual CFT in which each of the gauge groups is doubled. A common feature of non-Abelian T-duality is that in the absence of any global information coming from String Theory it gives rise to non-compact dual backgrounds, with coordinates living in the Lie algebra of the Lie group involved in the dualization. In backgrounds with CFT duals this poses obvious problems to the CFTs. In this paper we show that for the new AdS_4 background the gauge groups of the associated dual CFT undergo a spectral flow as the non-compact internal direction runs from 0 to infinity, which resembles Seiberg duality in N=1. This phenomenon, very reminiscent of the cascade, provides an interpretation in the CFT for the running of the non-compact coordinate, and suggests that at the end of the flow the extra charges disappear and the dual CFT is described by a 2-node quiver very similar to ABJM, albeit with reduced supersymmetry.