Orientifolds, M-Theory, and the ABCD's of the Enhancon

Abstract

Supergravity solutions related to large N SU(N) pure gauge theories with eight supercharges have recently been shown to give rise to an ``enhancon'', a new type of hypersurface made of D-branes. We show that enhancons also arise in similar situations pertaining to SO(2N+1), USp(2N) and SO(2N) gauge theories, using orientifolds. Enhancons therefore appear to come in types A, B, C, and D. The latter three differ globally from type A by having an extra Z_2 identification, and are distinguished locally by their subleading behaviour in large N. We focus mainly on 2+1 dimensional gauge theory, where a relation to M-theory and the Atiyah-Hitchin and Taub-NUT manifolds enables the construction of the smooth supergravity solution and the study of some of the 1/N corrections. The role of the enhancon in eleven dimensional supergravity is also uncovered. There is a close relation to certain multi-monopole moduli space problems.

26 pages, 2 figures (v2: references added)

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Cited by in corpus (9)

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• The Enhancon and the Consistency of Excision
• AdS and stabilized extra dimensions in multidimensional gravitational models with nonlinear scalar curvature terms 1/R and R^4
• Enhancons, Fuzzy Spheres and Multi-Monopoles
• Oblate, Toroidal, and Other Shapes for the Enhancon
• Violation of cosmic censorship in dynamical $p$-brane systems
• Probe brane dynamics on cosmological brane backgrounds
• A substrate for brane shells from $T\bar{T}$