Published February 8, 2024 | Version v1
Journal article Open

R7-branes as charge conjugation operators

  • 1. Arnold Sommerfeld Center for Theoretical Physics, LMU, Munich 80333, Germany
  • 2. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA
  • 3. Department of Mathematics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA
  • 4. Instituto de Física Teórica UAM-CSIC, c/Blas Cabrera 13-15, 28049 Madrid, Spain

Description

R7-branes are a class of recently discovered nonsupersymmetric real codimension-two duality defects in type IIB string theory predicted by the swampland cobordism conjecture. For type IIB realizations of 6D SCFTs with N=(2,0) supersymmetry, wrapping an R7-brane "at infinity" leads to a topological operator associated with a zero-form charge conjugation symmetry that squares to the identity. Similar considerations hold for those theories obtained from further toroidal compactification, but this can be obstructed by bundle curvature effects. Using some minimal data on the topological sector of the R7-branes, we extract the associated fusion rules for these charge conjugation operators. More broadly, we sketch a top down realization of various topological operators/interfaces associated with C, R, and T transformations. We also use holography to provide strong evidence for the existence of the R7-brane which is complementary to the cobordism conjecture. Similar considerations apply to other string-realized QFTs with symmetry operators constructed via nonsupersymmetric branes which carry a conserved charge.

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10.1103_PhysRevD.109.046004.pdf

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Additional details

Identifiers

DOI
10.1103/PhysRevD.109.046004;
arXiv
arXiv:2305.05689;
Crossref Funder ID
10.13039/100006920; 10.13039/100000015; 10.13039/100012818;

Publishing Information

Journal Title
Physical Review D
Journal Volume
109
Journal Issue
4
Journal Page Range
16 pgs.
ISSN
1089-4918

Optional Information

Contract/Grant/Project number
DE-SC0013528; 2022-T1/TIC-23956
Notes
Contact Email: m.dierigl@lmu.de; Contact Email: jheckman@sas.upenn.edu; Contact Email: miguel.montero@csic.es; Contact Email: emtorres@sas.upenn.edu; Record automatically processed
Funding organization
University of Pennsylvania; U.S. Department of Energy; Comunidad de Madrid; German-Israeli Project Cooperation