English

Wreathing, Discrete Gauging, and Non-invertible Symmetries

High Energy Physics - Theory 2025-01-27 v2

Abstract

't Hooft anomalies of discrete global symmetries and gaugings thereof have rich mathematical structures and far-reaching physical consequences. We examine each subgroup GG, up to automorphisms, of the permutation group S4S_4 that acts on the four legs of the affine D4D_4 quiver diagram, which is mirror dual to the 3d N=4\mathcal{N}=4 SU(2)\mathrm{SU}(2) gauge theory with four flavours. These actions are studied in terms of how each permutation cycle acts on the superconformal index of the theory in question. We present a prescription for refining the index with respect to the fugacities associated with the Abelian discrete symmetries that are subgroups of GG. This allows us to study sequential gauging of various subgroups of GG and construct symmetry webs. We study the effects of 't Hooft anomalies and non-invertible symmetries that arise from discrete gauging on the index. When the whole symmetry GG is gauged, our results are in perfect agreement with a type of discrete operations on the quiver, known as wreathing, discussed in the literature. We provide a general prescription for computing the index for any wreathed quivers that contain unitary or special unitary gauge groups. We demonstrate this in an example of the 3d N=4\mathcal{N}=4 U(N)\mathrm{U}(N) gauge theory with nn flavours and compare the results with gauging the charge conjugation symmetry associated with the flavour symmetry of such a theory.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2410.12906,
  title  = {Wreathing, Discrete Gauging, and Non-invertible Symmetries},
  author = {Julius F. Grimminger and William Harding and Noppadol Mekareeya},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2410.12906},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

Version 2: 80 pages with an Appendix, corrections and comments added, JHEP accepted