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arXiv · 2009.08375

(Mis-)Matching Type-B Anomalies on the Higgs Branch

Vasilis Niarchos·Constantinos Papageorgakis·Alessandro Pini·Elli Pomoni
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Abstract

Building on arXiv:1911.05827, we uncover new properties of type-B conformal anomalies for Coulomb-branch operators in continuous families of 4D $\mathcal{N}=2$ SCFTs. We study a large class of such anomalies on the Higgs branch, where conformal symmetry is spontaneously broken, and compare them with their counterpart in the CFT phase. In Lagrangian theories, the non-perturbative matching of the anomalies can be determined with a weak coupling Feynman diagram computation involving massive multi-loop banana integrals. We extract the part corresponding to the anomalies of interest. Our calculations support the general conjecture that the Coulomb-branch type-B conformal anomalies always match on the Higgs branch. On the other hand, we argue that the potential mismatch of anomalies implies the existence of a second covariantly constant metric on the conformal manifold (other than the Zamolodchikov metric), which would impose restrictions on its holonomy group.

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Vasilis Niarchos, Constantinos Papageorgakis, Alessandro Pini, Elli Pomoni. 2020-09-17. (Mis-)Matching Type-B Anomalies on the Higgs Branch. https://doi.org/10.1007/jhep01(2021)106

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