T-branes through 3d mirror symmetry
Abstract
T-branes are exotic bound states of D-branes, characterized by mutually non-commuting vacuum expectation values for the worldvolume scalars. The M/F-theory geometry lifting D6/D7-brane configurations is blind to the T-brane data. In this paper, we make this data manifest, by probing the geometry with an M2-brane. We find that the effect of a T-brane is to deform the membrane worldvolume superpotential with monopole operators, which partially break the three-dimensional flavor symmetry, and reduce supersymmetry from N=4 to N=2. Our main tool is 3d mirror symmetry. Through this language, a very concrete framework is developed for understanding T-branes in M-theory. This leads us to uncover a new class of N=2 quiver gauge theories, whose Higgs branches mimic those of membranes at ADE singularities, but whose Coulomb branches differ from their N=4 counterparts.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1603.00062,
title = {T-branes through 3d mirror symmetry},
author = {Andres Collinucci and Simone Giacomelli and Raffaele Savelli and Roberto Valandro},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1603.00062},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
36 pages