On the Defect Group of a 6D SCFT

By M. Del Zotto, J. Heckman, D. S. Park, Tom Rudelius. 2015

166 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We use the F-theory realization of 6D superconformal field theories (SCFTs) to study the corresponding spectrum of stringlike, i.e., surface defects. On the tensor branch, all of the stringlike excitations pick up a finite tension, and there is a corresponding lattice of string charges, as well as a dual lattice of charges for the surface defects. The defect group is data intrinsic to the SCFT and measures the surface defect charges which are not screened by dynamical strings. When non-trivial, it indicates that the associated theory has a partition vector rather than a partition function. We compute the defect group for all known 6D SCFTs, and find that it is just the abelianization of the discrete subgroup of U(2) which appears in the classification of 6D SCFTs realized in F-theory. We also explain how the defect group specifies defining data in the compactification of a (1, 0) SCFT.

Subfields: Computational Mechanics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0eb262adacf33daaf62c3c8a7079f96415f2a2db

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In Computational Mechanics

1. J. Heckman
2. Tom Rudelius

Citations in the corpus

• Top down approach to 6D SCFTs (2018, methodology): “If one imposes the more stringent demand that a “true” quantum field theory possesses a partition function rather than a vector of partition functions, then one can always add on a spectator set of free tensor multiplets such that the new defect group is trivial [127, 136].”
• Geometric Engineering, Mirror Symmetry and 6d (1,0) -> 4d, N=2 (2015, background): “It would be interesting to also study the fate of the surface defects of the 6d (1,0) theory upon compactification, perhaps along the lines suggested in [69].”