Higgs Branch Research Articles

Magnetic quivers for rank 1 theories

Magnetic quivers and Hasse diagrams for Higgs branches of rank 1 4d N = 2 SCFTs are provided. These rank 1 theories fit naturally into families of higher rank theories, originating from higher dimensions, which are addressed.

Hasse diagrams for 3d mathcal{N} = 4 quiver gauge theories \u2014 Inversion and the full moduli space

We study Hasse diagrams of moduli spaces of 3d mathcal{N} = 4 quiver gauge theories. The goal of this work is twofold: 1) We introduce the notion of inverting a Hasse diagram and conjecture that the Coulomb branch and Higgs branch Hasse diagrams of certain theories are related through this operation. 2) We introduce a Hasse diagram to map out the entire moduli space of the theory, including the Coulomb, Higgs and mixed branches. For theories whose Higgs and Coulomb branch Hasse diagrams are related by inversion it is straight forward to generate the Hasse diagram of the entire moduli space. We apply inversion of the Higgs branch Hasse diagram in order to obtain the Coulomb branch Hasse diagram for bad theories and obtain results consistent with the literature. For theories whose Higgs and Coulomb branch Hasse diagrams are not related by inversion it is nevertheless possible to produce the Hasse diagram of the full moduli space using different methods. We give examples for Hasse diagrams of the entire moduli space of theories with enhanced Coulomb branches.

3d mirrors of the circle reduction of twisted A2N theories of class S

Mirror symmetry has proven to be a powerful tool to study several properties of higher dimensional superconformal field theories upon compactification to three dimensions. We propose a quiver description for the mirror theories of the circle reduction of twisted A2N theories of class S in four dimensions. Although these quivers bear a resemblance to the star-shaped quivers previously studied in the literature, they contain unitary, symplectic and special orthogonal gauge groups, along with hypermultiplets in the fundamental representation. The vacuum moduli spaces of these quiver theories are studied in detail. The Coulomb branch Hilbert series of the mirror theory can be matched with that of the Higgs branch of the corresponding four dimensional theory, providing a non-trivial check of our proposal. Moreover various deformations by mass and Fayet-Iliopoulos terms of such quiver theories are investigated. The fact that several of them flow to expected theories also gives another strong support for the proposal. Utilising the mirror quiver description, we discover a new supersymmetry enhancement renormalisation group flow.

Magnetic quivers from brane webs with O5 planes

Magnetic quivers have led to significant progress in the understanding of gauge theories with 8 supercharges at UV fixed points. For a given low-energy gauge theory realised via a Type II brane construction, there exist magnetic quivers for the Higgs branches at finite and infinite gauge coupling. Comparing these moduli spaces allows one to study the non-perturbative effects when transitioning to the fixed point. For 5d mathcal{N} = 1 SQCD, 5-brane webs have been an important tool for deriving magnetic quivers. In this work, the emphasis is placed on 5-brane webs with orientifold 5-planes which give rise to 5d theories with orthogonal or symplectic gauge groups. For this set-up, the magnetic quiver prescription is derived and contrasted against a unitary magnetic quiver description extracted from an O7− construction. Further validation is achieved by a derivation of the associated Hasse diagrams. An important class of families considered are the orthogonal exceptional En families (−∞ < n ≤ 8), realised as infinite coupling Higgs branches of Sp(k) gauge theories with fundamental matter. In particular, the moduli spaces are realised by a novel type of magnetic quivers, called unitary-orthosymplectic quivers.

Trifectas for TN in 5d

The trinions TN are a class of 5d mathcal{N} = 1 superconformal field theories (SCFTs) realized as M-theory on ℂ3/ℤN× ℤN . We apply to TN , as well as closely-related SCFTs that are obtained by mass deformations, a multitude of recently developed approaches to studying 5d SCFTs and their IR gauge theory descriptions. Thereby we provide a complete picture of the theories both on the Coulomb branch and Higgs branch, from various geometric points of view — toric and gluing of compact surfaces as well as combined fiber diagrams — to magnetic quivers and Hasse diagrams.

Deformation quantizations from vertex operator algebras

In this note we address the question whether one can recover from the vertex operator algebra associated with a four-dimensional mathcal{N} = 2 superconformal field theory the deformation quantization of the Higgs branch of vacua that appears as a protected subsector in the three-dimensional circle-reduced theory. We answer this question positively if the UV R-symmetries do not mix with accidental (topological) symmetries along the renormalization group flow from the four-dimensional theory on a circle to the three-dimensional theory. If they do mix, we still find a deformation quantization but at different values of its period.

4d N=2 S -folds

We propose a generalization of S-folds to 4d $\mathcal{N}=2$ theories. This construction is motivated by the classification of rank one 4d $\mathcal{N}=2$ super-conformal field theories (SCFTs), which we reproduce from D3-branes probing a configuration of $\mathcal{N}=2$ S-folds combined with 7-branes. The main advantage of this point of view is that realizes both Coulomb and Higgs branch flows and allows for a straight forward generalization to higher rank theories.

General prescription for globalU(1)’s in 6D SCFTs

We present a general prescription for determining the global U(1) symmetries of six-dimensional superconformal field theories (6D SCFTs). We use the quiver-like gauge theory description of the tensor branch to identify candidate U(1) symmetries which can act on generalized matter. The condition that these candidate U(1)'s are free of Adler-Bell-Jackiw (ABJ) anomalies provides bottom-up constraints for U(1)'s. This agrees with the answer obtained from symmetry breaking patterns induced by Higgs branch flows. We provide numerous examples illustrating the details of this proposal. In the F-theory realization of these theories, some of these symmetries originate from deformations of non-abelian flavor symmetries localized on a component of the discriminant, while others come from an additional generator of the Mordell-Weil group. We also provide evidence that some of these global U(1)'s do not arise from gauge symmetries, as would happen in taking a decoupling limit of a model coupled to six-dimensional supergravity.

Non-Abelian mirror symmetry beyond the chiral ring

Mirror symmetry is a type of infrared duality in 3D quantum field theory that relates the low-energy dynamics of two distinct ultraviolet descriptions. Though first discovered in the supersymmetric context, it has far-reaching implications for understanding nonperturbative physics in general 3D quantum field theories. We study mirror symmetry in 3D $\mathcal{N}=4$ supersymmetric field theories whose Higgs or Coulomb branches realize $D$- and $E$-type Kleinian singularities in the $ADE$ classification, generalizing previous work on the $A$-type case. Such theories include the $SU(2)$ gauge theory coupled to fundamental matter in the $D$-type case and non-Lagrangian generalizations thereof in the $E$-type case. In these cases, the mirror description is given by a quiver gauge theory of affine $D$- or $E$-type. We investigate the mirror map at the level of the recently identified 1D protected subsector described by topological quantum mechanics, which implements a deformation quantization of the corresponding $ADE$ singularity. We give an explicit dictionary between the monopole operators and their dual mesonic operators in the $D$-type case. Along the way, we extract various operator product expansion (OPE) coefficients for the quantized Higgs and Coulomb branches. We conclude by offering some perspectives on how the topological subsectors of the $E$-type quivers might shed light on their non-Lagrangian duals.

Type-B anomaly matching and the 6D (2,0) theory

We study type-B conformal anomalies associated with frac{1}{2} -BPS Coulomb-branch operators in 4D mathcal{N} = 2 superconformal field theories. When the vacuum preserves the conformal symmetry these anomalies coincide with the two-point function coefficients in the Coulomb-branch chiral ring. They are non-trivial functions of exactly-marginal couplings that can be determined from the S4 partition function. In this paper, we examine the fate of these anomalies in vacua of the Higgs-branch moduli space, where conformal symmetry is spontaneously broken. We argue non-perturbatively that these anomalies are covariantly constant on conformal manifolds. In some cases, this can be used to show that they match in the broken and unbroken phases. Thus, we uncover a new class of data on the Higgs branch of 4D mathcal{N} = 2 conformal field theories that are exactly computable. An interesting application of this matching occurs in mathcal{N} = 2 circular quivers that deconstruct the 6D (2,0) theory on a torus. In that context, we argue that 4D supersymmetric localisation can be used to calculate non-trivial data involving frac{1}{2} -BPS operators of the 6D theory as exact functions of the complex structure of the torus.

VOAs and Rank-Two Instanton SCFTs

We analyze the mathcal {N}=2 superconformal field theories that arise when a pair of D3-branes probe an F-theory singularity from the perspective of the associated vertex operator algebra. We identify these vertex operator algebras for all cases; we find that they have a completely uniform description, parameterized by the dual Coxeter number of the corresponding global symmetry group. We further present free field realizations for these algebras in the style of recent work by three of the authors. These realizations transparently reflect the algebraic structure of the Higgs branches of these theories. We find fourth-order linear modular differential equations for the vacuum characters/Schur indices of these theories, which are again uniform across the full family of theories and parameterized by the dual Coxeter number. We comment briefly on expectations for the still higher-rank cases.

Brane webs and magnetic quivers for SQCD

It is widely considered that the classical Higgs branch of 4d mathcal{N} = 2 SQCD is a well understood object. However there is no satisfactory understanding of its structure. There are two complications: (1) the Higgs branch chiral ring contains nilpotent elements, as can easily be checked in the case of SU(N) with 1 flavour. (2) the Higgs branch as a geometric space can in general be decomposed into two cones with nontrivial intersection, the baryonic and mesonic branches. To study the second point in detail we use the recently developed tool of magnetic quivers for five-brane webs, using the fact that the classical Higgs branch for theories with 8 supercharges does not change through dimensional reduction. We compare this approach with the computation of the hyper-Kähler quotient using Hilbert series techniques, finding perfect agreement if nilpotent operators are eliminated by the computation of a so called radical. We study the nature of the nilpotent operators and give conjectures for the Hilbert series of the full Higgs branch, giving new insights into the vacuum structure of 4d mathcal{N} = 2 SQCD. In addition we demonstrate the power of the magnetic quiver technique, as it allows us to identify the decomposition into cones, and provides us with the global symmetries of the theory, as a simple alternative to the techniques that were used to date.

Magnetic quivers, Higgs branches, and 6d mathcal{N} = (1, 0) theories \u2014 orthogonal and symplectic gauge groups

M5 branes on a D-type ALE singularity display various phenomena that introduce additional massless degrees of freedom. The M5 branes are known to fractionate on a D-type singularity. Whenever two fractional M5 branes coincide, tensionless strings arise. Therefore, these systems do not admit a low-energy Lagrangian description. Focusing on the 6-dimensional mathcal{N} = (1, 0) world-volume theories on the M5 branes, the vacuum moduli space has two branches were either the scalar fields in the tensor multiplet or the scalars in the hypermultiplets acquire a non-trivial vacuum expectation value. As suggested in previous work, the Higgs branch may change drastically whenever a BPS-string becomes tensionless. Recently, magnetic quivers have been introduced with the aim to capture all Higgs branches over any point of the tensor branch. In this paper, the formalism is extended to Type IIA brane configurations involving O6 planes. Since the 6d mathcal{N} = (1, 0) theories are composed of orthosymplectic gauge groups, the derivation rules for the magnetic quiver in the presence of O6 planes have to be conjectured. This is achieved by analysing the 6d theories for a single M5 brane on a D-type singularity and deriving the magnetic quivers for the finite and infinite gauge coupling Higgs branch from a brane configuration. The validity of the proposed derivation rules is underpinned by deriving the associated Hasse diagram. For multiple M5 branes, the approach of this paper provides magnetic quivers for all Higgs branches over any point of the tensor branch. In particular, an interesting infinite gauge coupling transition is found that is related to the SO(8) non-Higgsable cluster.

Quiver theories and Hilbert series of classical Slodowy intersections

We build on previous studies of the Higgs and Coulomb branches of SUSY quiver theories having 8 supercharges, including 3dN=4, and Classical gauge groups. The vacuum moduli spaces of many such theories can be parameterised by pairs of nilpotent orbits of Classical Lie algebras; they are transverse to one orbit and intersect the closure of the second. We refer to these transverse spaces as “Slodowy intersections”. They embrace reduced single instanton moduli spaces, nilpotent orbits, Kraft-Procesi transitions and Slodowy slices, as well as other types. We show how quiver subtractions, between multi-flavoured unitary or ortho-symplectic quivers, can be used to find a complete set of Higgs branch constructions for the Slodowy intersections of any Classical group. We discuss the relationships between the Higgs and Coulomb branches of these quivers and Tσρ theories in the context of 3d mirror symmetry, including problematic aspects of Coulomb branch constructions from ortho-symplectic quivers. We review Coulomb and Higgs branch constructions for a subset of Slodowy intersections from multi-flavoured Dynkin diagram quivers. We tabulate Hilbert series and Highest Weight Generating functions for Slodowy intersections of Classical algebras up to rank 4. The results are confirmed by direct calculation of Hilbert series from a localisation formula for normal Slodowy intersections that is related to the Hall Littlewood polynomials.

The Higgs mechanism \u2014 Hasse diagrams for symplectic singularities

We explore the geometrical structure of Higgs branches of quantum field theories with 8 supercharges in 3, 4, 5 and 6 dimensions. They are symplectic singularities, and as such admit a decomposition (or foliation ) into so-called symplectic leaves, which are related to each other by transverse slices. We identify this foliation with the pattern of partial Higgs mechanism of the theory and, using brane systems and recently introduced notions of magnetic quivers and quiver subtraction, we formalise the rules to obtain the Hasse diagram which encodes the structure of the foliation. While the unbroken gauge symmetry and the number of flat directions are obtainable by classical field theory analysis for Lagrangian theories, our approach allows us to characterise the geometry of the Higgs branch by a Hasse diagram with symplectic leaves and transverse slices, thus refining the analysis and extending it to non-Lagrangian theories. Most of the Hasse diagrams we obtain extend beyond the cases of nilpotent orbit closures known in the mathematics literature. The geometric analysis developed in this paper is applied to Higgs branches of several Lagrangian gauge theories, Argyres-Douglas theories, five dimensional SQCD theories at the conformal fixed point, and six dimensional SCFTs.

Supersymmetric Landau-Ginzburg tensor models

We study two dimensional mathcal{N} = (2, 2) Landau-Ginzburg models with tensor valued superfields with the aim of constructing large central charge superconformal field theories which are solvable using large N techniques. We demonstrate the viability of such constructions and motivate the study of anisotropic tensor models. Such theories are a novel deformation of tensor models where we break the continuous symmetries while preserving the large N solvability. Specifically, we examine theories with superpotentials involving tensor contractions chosen to pick out melonic diagrams. The anisotropy is introduced by further biasing individual terms by different coefficients, all of the same order, to retain large N scaling. We carry out a detailed analysis of the resulting low energy fixed point and comment on potential applications to holography. Along the way we also examine gauged versions of the models (with partial anisotropy) and find generically that such theories have a non-compact Higgs branch of vacua.

Free field realizations from the Higgs branch

We present free field realizations for the associated vertex operator algebras of a number of four-dimensional mathcal{N} = 2 superconformal field theories. Our constructions utilize an exceptionally small set of chiral bosons whose number matches the complex dimensionality of the Higgs branch of the superconformal field theory. In the case of theories whose Higgs branches support additional degrees of freedom (free vector multiplets or decoupled interacting SCFTs), the corresponding “free field realizations” include additional ingredients: symplectic fermions in the case of vector multiplets and a C2 co-finite VOA in the case of a residual interacting SCFT. The resulting picture is that the associated VOA can be constructed from the Higgs branch effective theory via free field realization. Our constructions also provide a natural realization of the R-filtration of the associated VOA.

Twisted indices of 3d mathcal{N} = 4 gauge theories and enumerative geometry of quasi-maps

We explore the geometric interpretation of the twisted index of 3d mathcal{N} = 4 gauge theories on S1 × Σ where Σ is a closed Riemann surface. We focus on a rich class of supersymmetric quiver gauge theories that have isolated vacua under generic mass and FI parameter deformations. We show that the path integral localises to a moduli space of solutions to generalised vortex equations on Σ, which can be understood algebraically as quasi-maps to the Higgs branch. We show that the twisted index reproduces the virtual Euler characteristic of the moduli spaces of twisted quasi-maps and demonstrate that this agrees with the contour integral representation introduced in previous work. Finally, we investigate 3d mathcal{N} = 4 mirror symmetry in this context, which implies an equality of enumerative invariants associated to mirror pairs of Higgs branches under the exchange of equivariant and degree counting parameters.

Magnetic quivers, Higgs branches and 6d mathcal{N} = left(1,kern0.5em 0right) theories

The physics of M5 branes placed near an M9 plane on an A-type ALE singularity exhibits a variety of phenomena that introduce additional massless degrees of freedom. There are tensionless strings whenever two M5 branes coincide or whenever an M5 brane approaches the M9 plane. 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 mathcal{N} = left(1,kern0.5em 0right) 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, previous works suggest the conjecture that 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. The two main phenomena discrete gauging and small E8instanton transition can be treated in a concise and effective manner by means of Coulomb branches of 3-dimensional mathcal{N} = 4 gauge theories. In this paper, a formalism is introduced that allows to derive a novel object from a brane configuration, called the magnetic quiver. The main features are as follows: (i) the 3d Coulomb branch of the magnetic quiver yields the Higgs branch of the 6d system, (ii) all discrete gauging and E8 instanton transitions have an explicit brane realisation, and (iii) exceptional symmetries arise directly from brane configurations. The formalism facilitates the description of Higgs branches at finite and infinite gauge coupling as spaces of dressed monopole operators.

Higgs and Coulomb branch descriptions of the volume of the vortex moduli space

BPS vortex systems on closed Riemann surfaces with arbitrary genus are embedded into two-dimensional supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory with matters. We turn on a background R-gauge fields to keep half of rigid supersymmetry (topological A-twist) on the curved space. We consider two complementary descriptions; Higgs and Coulomb branches. The path integral reduces to the zero mode integral by the localization in the Higgs branch. The integral over the bosonic zero modes directly gives an integral over the volume form of the moduli space, whereas the fermionic zero modes are compensated by an appropriate operator insertion. In the Coulomb branch description with the same operator insertion, the path integral reduces to a finite-dimensional residue integral. The operator insertion automatically determines a choice of integral contours, leading to the Jeffrey-Kirwan residue formula. This result ensures the existence of the solution to the BPS vortex equation and explains the Bradlow bounds of the BPS vortex. We also discuss a generating function of the volume of the vortex moduli space and show a reduction of the moduli space from semi-local to local vortices.