T-branes and monodromy

By S. Cecotti, Clay Córdova, J. Heckman, C. Vafa. 2010

203 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We introduce T-branes, or “triangular branes”, which are novel non-abelian bound states of branes characterized by the condition that on some loci, their matrix of normal deformations, or Higgs field, is upper triangular. These configurations refine the notion of monodromic branes which have recently played a key role in F-theory phenomenology. We show how localized matter living on complex codimension one subspaces emerge, and explain how to compute their Yukawa couplings, which are localized in complex codimension two. Not only do T-branes clarify what is meant by brane monodromy, they also open up a vast array of new possibilities both for phenomenological constructions and for purely theoretical applications. We show that for a general T-brane, the eigenvalues of the Higgs field can fail to capture the spectrum of localized modes. In particular, this provides a method for evading some constraints on F-theory GUTs which have assumed that the spectral equation for the Higgs field completely determines a local model.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/79a1a0468ab3ebb8be52a6d46a8a89f7135ece26

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

In Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

Citations in the corpus

6d Conformal matter (2014, background): “Our characterization of vacua by nilpotent elements of the complexified flavor symmetry is basically a special case of the broader notion of “T-brane data” in an F-theory compactification [18–22].”
On the classification of 6D SCFTs and generalized ADE orbifolds (2013, background): “For example, in the A-type (2, 0) theory given by a configuration of −2 curves, we can either leave the curves undecorated, or make the elliptic fiber more Recently it has been found that a singular compactification of F-theory can contain various ambiguities, which are repaired by including additio”
Matter and singularities (2011, background): “There are thus additional real degrees of freedom not captured by the Weierstrass coefficients; these are associated with degrees of freedom on the branes [34], and may be related to the T-brane construction of [35].”
Small resolutions of SU(5)-models in F-theory (2011, background): “Another approach based on the field theory on the seven-branes world volume has been developed recently [25, 26, 27, 32].”
U(1) symmetries in F-theory GUTs with multiple sections (2012, background): “8) holds, branch cuts are induced in the form of the ti as functions on SGUT which map them to each other as we move around the branch [32].”