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A gravity interpretation for the complex Euclidean saddles of the ABJM index

High Energy Physics - Theory 2026-05-05 v1

Abstract

The superconformal index is a grand-canonical partition function that counts the 1/16-BPS states in the theory, and its Legendre transform with respect to reduced chemical potentials accounts for the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy of electrically charged rotating black holes in anti-de Sitter spacetime. However, the superconformal index of N=4\mathcal{N}=4 super Yang-Mills theory appears to allow shifts in chemical potentials, and the contributions of the shifted terms diverge exponentially. This puzzle was resolved by showing the instability of wrapped D3-branes corresponding to the shifts in the gravitational on-shell action. Analogously, we study the ABJM index and the M5-brane instability criterion.

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Cite

@article{arxiv.2605.00987,
  title  = {A gravity interpretation for the complex Euclidean saddles of the ABJM index},
  author = {Minwoo Suh},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.00987},
  year   = {2026}
}

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26 pages