M5-branes probing flux backgrounds

Abstract

We analyze the global symmetries and anomalies of 4d mathcal{N} = 1 field theories that arise from a stack of N M5-branes probing a class of flux backgrounds. These backgrounds consist of a resolved ℂ2/ℤk singularity fibered over a smooth Riemann surface of genus g ≥ 2, supported by a non-trivial G4-flux configuration labeled by a collection of 2(k − 1) flux quanta, {Ni}. For k = 2, this setup defines a non-trivial superconformal field theory (SCFT) in the IR, which is holographically dual to an explicit AdS5 solution first described by Gauntlett, Martelli, Sparks, and Waldram. The generalization to k ≥ 3 is hard to tackle directly within holography. Instead, in this paper we lay the groundwork for a systematic analysis of such a generalization by adopting anomaly inflow methods to identify continuous and discrete global symmetries of the 4d field theories. We also compute the ’t Hooft anomalies for continuous symmetries at leading order in the limit of large N, Ni.