(Mis-)matching type-B anomalies on the Higgs branch

Niarchos, V.; Papageorgakis, C.; Pini, A.; Pomoni, E.

Abstract

Building on [1], we uncover new properties of type-B conformal anomalies for Coulomb-branch operators in continuous families of 4D N = 2 SCFTs. We study a large class of such anomalies on the Higgs branch, where conformal symmetry is spontaneously broken, and compare them with their counterpart in the CFT phase. In Lagrangian the- ories, the non-perturbative matching of the anomalies can be determined with a weak coupling Feynman diagram computation involving massive multi-loop banana integrals. We extract the part corresponding to the anomalies of interest. Our calculations support the general conjecture that the Coulomb-branch type-B conformal anomalies always match on the Higgs branch when the IR Coulomb-branch chiral ring is empty. In the opposite case, there are anomalies that do not match. An intriguing implication of the mismatch is the existence of a second covariantly constant metric on the conformal manifold (other than the Zamolodchikov metric), which imposes previously unknown restrictions on its holonomy group.

Citation

Niarchos, V., Papageorgakis, C., Pini, A., & Pomoni, E. (2021). (Mis-)matching type-B anomalies on the Higgs branch. Journal of High Energy Physics, 2021, Article 106. https://doi.org/10.1007/jhep01%282021%29106

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Dec 1, 2020
• Online Publication Date: Jan 19, 2021
• Publication Date: 2021
• Deposit Date: Jan 25, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 8, 2021
• Journal: Journal of High Energy Physics
• Print ISSN: 1126-6708
• Electronic ISSN: 1029-8479
• Publisher: Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA)
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 2021
• Article Number: 106
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/jhep01%282021%29106
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1281186