Type IIB S-folds: flat deformations, holography and stability

Abstract

We review recent progress in the study of S-folds in light of the gauge/gravity duality and the AdS swampland conjecture. S-folds correspond to non-geometric backgrounds of type IIB supergravity of the form ${\text{AdS}}_4\times {\text{S}}^1\times \mathcal{M}$ that involve a non-trivial $\text{SL}(2,\mathbb{Z})$ (S-duality) monodromy for the type IIB fields when moving around the ${\text{S}}^1$. We present four such solutions with $\mathcal{M}={\text{S}}^5$ that preserve $\mathcal{N}=4,2,1,0$ supersymmetries. Via the AdS/CFT correspondence, these solutions are conjectured to describe new strongly coupled three-dimensional CFT's on a localised interface of SYM. We discuss the existence of flat deformations in the gravity side dual to marginal deformations of the conjectured S-fold CFT's. From a geometrical perspective, the flat deformations induce a monodromy $h$ on $\mathcal{M}$ and replace ${\text{S}}^1\times \mathcal{M}$ by the so-called mapping torus $T(\mathcal{M}{)}_h$. Interestingly, the flat deformations provide a controlled mechanism of supersymmetry breaking for $\mathcal{N}\ge 2$ S-folds. We present a class of such non-supersymmetric S-folds obtained by flat-deforming the $\mathcal{N}=4$ S-fold and discuss their (non-)perturbative stability.

Contribution to the CORFU2021 proceedings. 20 pages, 2 figures

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