Flowing to Higher Dimensions: A New Strongly-Coupled Phase on M2 Branes

Abstract

We describe a one-parameter family of new holographic RG flows that start from $Ad{S}_4\times S^7$ and go to $\widehat{Ad{S}_5}\times {\mathcal{B}}_6$, where ${\mathcal{B}}_6$ is conformal to a Kähler manifold and $\widehat{Ad{S}_5}$ is Poincaré $Ad{S}_5$ with one spatial direction compactified and fibered over ${\mathcal{B}}_6$. The new solutions "flow up dimensions," going from the $(2+1)$-dimensional conformal field theory on M2 branes in the UV to a $(3+1)$-dimensional field theory on intersecting M5 branes in the infra-red. The M2 branes completely polarize into M5 branes along the flow and the Poincaré sections of the $\widehat{Ad{S}_5}$ are the $(3+1)$-dimensional common intersection of the M5 branes. The emergence of the extra dimension in the infra-red suggests a new strongly-coupled phase of the M2 brane and ABJM theories in which charged solitons are becoming massless. The flow solution is first analyzed by finding a four-dimensional $N=2$ supersymmetric flow in $N=8$ gauged supergravity. This is then generalized to a one parameter family of non-supersymmetric flows. The infra-red limit of the solutions appears to be quite singular in four dimensions but the uplift to eleven-dimensional supergravity is remarkable and regular (up to orbifolding). Our construction is a non-trivial application of the recently derived uplift formulae for fluxes, going well beyond the earlier constructions of stationary points solutions. The eleven-dimensional supersymmetry is also analyzed and shows how, for the supersymmetric flow, the M2-brane supersymmetry in the UV is polarized entirely into M5-brane supersymmetry in the infra-red.

28 pages, 2 figures. Version 2 contains a discussion of new non-supersymmetric flows

References in corpus (7)

• N=6 superconformal Chern-Simons-matter theories, M2-branes and their gravity duals
• The gravity duals of N=2 superconformal field theories
• Supergravity Instabilities of Non-Supersymmetric Quantum Critical Points
• Holographic, N=1 Supersymmetric RG Flows on M2 Branes
• Higher dimensional conformal field theories in the Coulomb branch
• A Family of M-theory Flows with Four Supersymmetries
• Holographic Dual of the Eguchi-Kawai Mechanism

Cited by in corpus (14)

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• Boundary Terms and Three-Point Functions: An AdS/CFT Puzzle Resolved
• Large N behavior of mass deformed ABJM theory
• $\mathcal{N}=2$ Supersymmetric Janus Solutions and Flows: From Gauged Supergravity to M Theory
• New Superstrata from Three-Dimensional Supergravity
• M/F-Theory as Mf-Theory
• The Embedding of Gauged STU Supergravity in Eleven Dimensions
• Supersymmetric solutions from N=5 gauged supergravity
• Supersymmetric solutions from N=6 gauged supergravity
• Janus and Hades in M-theory
• Non-linear uplift Ansätze for the internal metric and the four-form field-strength of maximal supergravity
• Holographic RG flows and Janus solutions from matter-coupled N=4 gauged supergravity
• Holographic RG flows and symplectic deformations of N=4 gauged supergravity
• Consistent 4-form fluxes for maximal supergravity