The Off-shell M5-brane and Non-Perturbative Gauge Theory

Abstract

M5-branes wrapping a holomorphic curve in a Calabi-Yau manifold can be used to construct four-dimensional N=1 gauge theories. In this paper we will consider M5-brane configurations corresponding to N=2 theories broken to N=1 by a superpotential for the adjoint scalar field. These M5-brane configurations can be obtained by lifting suitable intersecting brane configurations in type IIA, or equivalently by T-dualizing IIB configurations with branes and/or fluxes. We will show that turning on non-trivial expectation values for the glueball superfields corresponds to non-holomorphic deformations of the M5-brane. We compute the superpotential and show it agrees with that computed by Dijkgraaf and Vafa. Several aspects of the gauge theory, such as the appearance of non-holomorphic one-forms with integer periods on the Seiberg-Witten curve, have a natural interpretation from the M5-brane point of view. We also explain the interpretation of the superpotential in terms of the twisted (2,0) theory living on the fivebrane.

30 pages

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Cited by in corpus (9)

• Nonsupersymmetric Brane/Antibrane Configurations in Type IIA and M Theory
• Chern-Simons Theory, 2d Yang-Mills, and Lie Algebra Wanderers
• N=1 Geometries via M-theory
• Stable vs Unstable Vortices in SQCD
• Off-shell M5 Brane, Perturbed Seiberg-Witten Theory, and Metastable Vacua
• Confinement and duality in supersymmetric gauge theories
• Vacua of N=1 Supersymmetric QCD from Spin Chains and Matrix Models
• $\mathcal{N}=2$ Argyres-Douglas theories, $\mathcal{N}=1$ SQCD and Seiberg duality
• Dual Interpretations of Seiberg-Witten and Dijkgraaf-Vafa curves