Gauged 2-form symmetries in 6D SCFTs coupled to gravity

Braun, Andreas P.; Larfors, Magdalena; Oehlmann, Paul-Konstantin

Abstract

We study six dimensional supergravity theories with superconformal sectors (SCFTs). Instances of such theories can be engineered using type IIB strings, or more generally F-Theory, which translates field theoretic constraints to geometry. Specifically, we study the fate of the discrete 2-form global symmetries of the SCFT sectors. For both (2, 0) and (1, 0) theories we show that whenever the charge lattice of the SCFT sectors is non-primitively embedded into the charge lattice of the supergravity theory, there is a subgroup of these 2-form symmetries that remains unbroken by BPS strings. By the absence of global symmetries in quantum gravity, this subgroup much be gauged. Using the embedding of the charge lattices also allows us to determine how the gauged 2-form symmetry embeds into the 2-form global symmetries of the SCFT sectors, and we present several concrete examples, as well as some general observations. As an alternative derivation, we recover our results for a large class of models from a dual perspective upon reduction to five dimensions.

Citation

Braun, A. P., Larfors, M., & Oehlmann, P.-K. (2021). Gauged 2-form symmetries in 6D SCFTs coupled to gravity. Journal of High Energy Physics, 2021(12), Article 132. https://doi.org/10.1007/jhep12%282021%29132

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Nov 24, 2021
• Online Publication Date: Dec 20, 2021
• Publication Date: 2021
• Deposit Date: Jan 4, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 4, 2022
• Journal: Journal of High Energy Physics
• Print ISSN: 1126-6708
• Publisher: Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA)
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 2021
• Issue: 12
• Article Number: 132
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/jhep12%282021%29132
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1219590