Homological S-Duality in 4d N=2 QFTs

Publication date 23 December 2016

Abstract: The

S

-duality group

m a t h b b S (m a t h c a l F)

of a 4d

m a t h c a l N = 2

supersymmetric theory

m a t h c a l F

is identified with the group of triangle auto-equivalences of its cluster category

m a t h s c r C (m a t h c a l F)

modulo the subgroup acting trivially on the physical quantities.

m a t h b b S (m a t h c a l F)

is a discrete group commensurable to a subgroup of the Siegel modular group

S p (2 g, m a t h b b Z)

(

g

being the dimension of the Coulomb branch). This identification reduces the determination of the

S

-duality group of a given

m a t h c a l N = 2

theory to a problem in homological algebra. In this paper we describe the techniques which make the computation straightforward for a large class of

m a t h c a l N = 2

QFTs. The group

m a t h b b S (m a t h c a l F)

is naturally presented as a generalized braid group. The

S

-duality groups are often larger than expected. In some models the enhancement of

S

-duality is quite spectacular. For instance, a QFT with a huge

S

-duality group is the Lagrangian SCFT with gauge group

S O (8) i m e s S O (5)^{3} i m e s S O (3)^{6}

and half-hypermultiplets in the bi- and tri-spinor representations. We focus on four families of examples: the

m a t h c a l N = 2

SCFTs of the form

(G, G^{p} r i m e)

,

D_{p} (G)

, and

E_{r}^{(1, 1)} (G)

, as well as the asymptotically-free theories

(G, w i d e h a t H)

(which contain

m a t h c a l N = 2

SQCD as a special case). For the

E_{r}^{(1, 1)} (G)

models we confirm the presence of the

P S L (2, m a t h b b Z)

S

-duality group predicted by Del Zotto, Vafa and Xie, but for most models in this class

S

-duality gets enhanced to a much larger group.

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