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arXiv · 1804.09932

Wilson surfaces in M5-branes

Prarit Agarwal·Joonho Kim·Seok Kim·Antonio Sciarappa
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Abstract

We study Wilson surface defects in 6d $\mathcal{N}=(2,0)$ superconformal field theories, engineered by semi-infinite M2-branes intersecting M5-branes. Two independent approaches are used to obtain the Wilson surface observables on the $T^2$ inside Omega-deformed $\mathbf{R}^4 \times T^2$. One approach is to compute 5d $\mathcal{N}=1^*$ instanton partition functions in the presence of Wilson lines, where the instanton corrections capture the 6d Kaluza-Klein momentum modes. The other approach is to study the elliptic genera of 2d $\mathcal{N}=(0,4)$ gauge theories, which we propose as describing 6d self-dual strings in the presence of Wilson surface defects. We make a detailed comparison between these two independent computations, which precisely agree for Wilson surfaces in minuscule representations; for non-minuscule representations instead we only find partial agreement, due to technical problems which we comment about.

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Prarit Agarwal, Joonho Kim, Seok Kim, Antonio Sciarappa. 2018-04-26. Wilson surfaces in M5-branes. https://doi.org/10.1007/jhep08(2018)119

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