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arXiv · hep-th/9605199

Probing F-theory With Branes

Tom Banks·Michael R. Douglas·Nathan Seiberg
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Abstract

Last week, A. Sen found an explicit type I string compactification dual to the eight-dimensional F-theory construction with SO(8)^4 nonabelian gauge symmetry. He found that the perturbations around the enhanced symmetry point were described by the mathematics of the solution of N=2, d=4 SU(2) gauge theory with four flavors, and argued more generally that global symmetry enhancement in CN=2, d=4 gauge theories corresponded to gauge symmetry enhancement in F-theory. We show that these N=2, d=4 gauge theories have a physical interpretation in the theory. They are the world-volume theories of 3-branes parallel to the 7-branes. They can be used to probe the structure of the exact quantum F-theory solutions. On the Higgs branch of the moduli space, the objects are equivalent to finite size instantons in the 7-brane gauge theory.

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Tom Banks, Michael R. Douglas, Nathan Seiberg. 1996-05-29. Probing F-theory With Branes. https://doi.org/10.1016/0370-2693(96)00808-8

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