Bootstrapping M-theory orbifolds

We investigate the 3-sphere partition functions of various 3d $$ \mathcal{N} $$ N = 2 holographic SCFTs arising from the N stack of M2-branes in the ’t Hooft limit both analytically and numerically. We first employ a saddle point approximation to evaluate the free energy F = – log Z at the planar level, tracking the first subleading corrections in the large ’t Hooft coupling λ expansion. Subsequently, we improve these results by determining the planar free energy to all orders in the large λ expansion via numerical analysis. Remarkably, the resulting planar free energies turn out to take a universal form, supporting a prediction that these S3 partition functions are all given in terms of an Airy function even beyond the special cases where the Airy formulae were derived analytically in the literature; in this context we also present new Airy conjectures in several examples. The subleading behaviors we captured encode a part of quantum corrections to the M-theory path integrals around dual asymptotically Euclidean AdS4 backgrounds with the corresponding internal manifolds through holographic duality.

Subleading analysis for S3 partition functions of $$ \mathcal{N} $$ = 2 holographic SCFTs

Geukens,

Hong

2024

Towards bootstrapping F-theory

Behan,

Chester,

Ferrero

2024

We consider type IIB string theory with N D3 branes and various configurations of sevenbranes, such that the string coupling gs is fixed to a constant finite value. These are the simplest realizations of F-theory, and are holographically dual to rank N Argyres-Douglas conformal field theories (CFTs) with SU(2) and SU(3) flavor groups, and Minahan-Nemeschansky CFTs with E6, E7 and E8 flavor groups. We use the Seiberg-Witten curves of these theories to compute the mass deformed sphere free energy F (m) at large N in terms of novel matrix models with non-polynomial potentials. We show how F (m) can be used along with the analytic bootstrap to fix the large N expansion of flavor multiplet correlators in these CFTs, which are dual to scattering of gluons on AdS5 × S3, and in the flat space limit determine the effective theory of sevenbranes in F-theory. As a first step in this program, we use the matrix models to compute the log N term in F (m) and thereby fix the logarithmic threshold in the AdS5 × S3 holographic correlator, which matches the flat space prediction.

Mellin amplitudes for AdS3 × S3

Behan,

Pitombo

2024

There are holographic superconformal theories in all dimensions between two and six which allow arbitrary tree-level four-point functions to be fixed by basic consistency conditions. Although Mellin space is usually the most efficient setting for imposing these contraints, four-point functions in two dimensions have thus far been an exception due to their more intricate dependence on the conformal cross-ratios. In this paper, we introduce a simple fix which exploits the relation between a parity-odd conformal block in two dimensions and a parity-even conformal block in four dimensions. We then apply the resulting toolkit to a study of the paradigmatic holographic theory in two dimensions which is the D1-D5 CFT. For correlators involving Kaluza-Klein modes of the tensor multiplet, this analysis reproduces results which were previously obtained using hidden conformal symmetry. With four Kaluza-Klein modes of the graviton multiplet, it yields new results including a compact formula for the correlators of all pairwise identical operators.