English

Homological S-Duality in 4d N=2 QFTs

High Energy Physics - Theory 2016-12-26 v1 Mathematical Physics math.MP

Abstract

The SS-duality group S(F)\mathbb{S}(\mathcal{F}) of a 4d N=2\mathcal{N}=2 supersymmetric theory F\mathcal{F} is identified with the group of triangle auto-equivalences of its cluster category C(F)\mathscr{C}(\mathcal{F}) modulo the subgroup acting trivially on the physical quantities. S(F)\mathbb{S}(\mathcal{F}) is a discrete group commensurable to a subgroup of the Siegel modular group Sp(2g,Z)Sp(2g,\mathbb{Z}) (gg being the dimension of the Coulomb branch). This identification reduces the determination of the SS-duality group of a given N=2\mathcal{N}=2 theory to a problem in homological algebra. In this paper we describe the techniques which make the computation straightforward for a large class of N=2\mathcal{N}=2 QFTs. The group S(F)\mathbb{S}(\mathcal{F}) is naturally presented as a generalized braid group. The SS-duality groups are often larger than expected. In some models the enhancement of SS-duality is quite spectacular. For instance, a QFT with a huge SS-duality group is the Lagrangian SCFT with gauge group SO(8)×SO(5)3×SO(3)6SO(8)\times SO(5)^3\times SO(3)^6 and half-hypermultiplets in the bi- and tri-spinor representations. We focus on four families of examples: the N=2\mathcal{N}=2 SCFTs of the form (G,G)(G,G^\prime), Dp(G)D_p(G), and Er(1,1)(G)E_r^{(1,1)}(G), as well as the asymptotically-free theories (G,H^)(G,\widehat{H}) (which contain N=2\mathcal{N}=2 SQCD as a special case). For the Er(1,1)(G)E_r^{(1,1)}(G) models we confirm the presence of the PSL(2,Z)PSL(2,\mathbb{Z}) SS-duality group predicted by Del Zotto, Vafa and Xie, but for most models in this class SS-duality gets enhanced to a much larger group.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1612.08065,
  title  = {Homological S-Duality in 4d N=2 QFTs},
  author = {Matteo Caorsi and Sergio Cecotti},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1612.08065},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

102 pages, 12 figure, 6 tables

R2 v1 2026-06-22T17:33:35.396Z