Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Albertini, Federica
• Del Zotto, Michele
• García Etxebarria, Iñaki
• Hosseini, Saghar S.

Titel

Higher form symmetries and M-theory

Ist Teil von

• The journal of high energy physics, 2020-12, Vol.2020 (12), p.1-46, Article 203

Ort / Verlag

Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg

Erscheinungsjahr

2020

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

EZB*

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• A bstract We discuss the geometric origin of discrete higher form symmetries of quantum field theories in terms of defect groups from geometric engineering in M-theory. The flux non-commutativity in M-theory gives rise to (mixed) ’t Hooft anomalies for the defect group which constrains the corresponding global structures of the associated quantum fields. We analyze the example of 4d N = 1 SYM gauge theory in four dimensions, and we reproduce the well-known classification of global structures from reading between its lines. We extend this analysis to the case of 7d N = 1 SYM theory, where we recover it from a mixed ’t Hooft anomaly among the electric 1-form center symmetry and the magnetic 4-form center symmetry in the defect group. The case of five-dimensional SCFTs from M-theory on toric singularities is discussed in detail. In that context we determine the corresponding 1-form and 2-form defect groups and we explain how to determine the corresponding mixed ’t Hooft anomalies from flux non-commutativity. Several predictions for non-conventional 5d SCFTs are obtained. The matching of discrete higher-form symmetries and their anomalies provides an interesting consistency check for 5d dualities.