AdS_5 vacua and holographic RG flows from 5D N=4 gauged supergravity

Abstract

We study five-dimensional N=4 gauged supergravity coupled to five vector multiplets with SO(2)_Dtimes SO(3)times SO(3) gauge group. There are four supersymmetric AdS_5 vacua in the truncation to SO(2)_{text {diag}} invariant scalars. Two of these vacua preserve the full N=4 supersymmetry with SO(2)_Dtimes SO(3)times SO(3) and SO(2)_Dtimes SO(3)_{text {diag}} symmetries. These have an analogue in N=4 gauged supergravity with SO(2)times SO(3)times SO(3) gauge group. The other two AdS_5 vacua preserve only N=2 supersymmetry with SO(2)_{text {diag}}times SO(3) and SO(2)_{text {diag}} symmetry. The former has an analogue in the previous study of SO(2)_Dtimes SO(3) gauge group while the latter is a genuinely new N=2AdS_5 vacuum. These vacua should be dual to N=2 and N=1 superconformal field theories (SCFTs) in four dimensions with different flavour symmetries. We give the full scalar mass spectra at all of the AdS_5 critical points which provide information on conformal dimensions of the dual operators. Finally, we study holographic RG flows interpolating between these AdS_5 vacua and find a new class of solutions. In addition to the RG flows from the trivial SO(2)_Dtimes SO(3)times SO(3)N=4 critical point, at the origin of the scalar manifold, to all the other critical points, there is a family of RG flows from the trivial N=4 critical point to the new SO(2)_{text {diag}}N=2 critical point that pass arbitrarily close to the SO(2)_Dtimes SO(3)_{text {diag}}N=4 critical point.