Engineering in the Landscape: Geometry, Symmetries and Anomalies

24 Aug 2022, 09:30 → 26 Aug 2022, 17:10 Europe/Stockholm

Å80127 (Uppsala Universitet)

Andreas Braun (Durham University), Magdalena Larfors (Durham & Uppsala University), Paul-Konstantin Oehlmann (Uppsala University)

Scope:

String theory has provided deep insights on the nature of symmetries, anomalies and the UV completion of effective field theories. In string theory, all these aspects are tied to geometry, and may be understood to a remarkable degree in terms of geometric concepts such as singularities and moduli spaces. In recent years, this geometric approach has led to vast progress: Symmetries have been systematically extended to higher groups, anomalies have been reformulated via bordism theory, and there is a budding understanding on how the landscape of consistent (super)gravity theories is fenced off from the swampland of inconsistent low-energy theories. These rapid developments engage a growing number of researchers with different backgrounds.

 

Workshop description:

The goal of this workshop is to bring together experts in geometric engineering of quantum field theories, researchers of generalised higher form symmetries, developers of formal aspects of string compactifications and compact geometries, and protagonists of the Swampland program. Through a focused program that blends topical seminars with ample time for discussions and interactions, we hope to facilitate communication and exchange of ideas to further accelerate the progress in the respective fields, and build new cross-field collaborations.

 

Confirmed conference speakers

• Michele del Zotto (Uppsala University)
• Markus Dierigl (LMU Munich)
• Iñaki García Etxebarria (Durham University)
• Craig Lawrie (DESY Hamburg)
• Miguel Montero (Harvard University)
• Thorsten Schimannek (Sorbonne University)
• Marieke van Beest (University of Oxford)

 

Venue:

The workshop is hosted by the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Uppsala University. The scientific program will take place in the Ångströmlaboratoriet located in walking distance from the city center. See further information by clicking the link in the sidebar.

 

Sponsors:

• Uppsala-Durham Seedcorn Fund
• This workshop is co-funded by the ERC project MEMO

Wednesday, 24 August

Welcome

IIB Determined - Bordisms, Duality, and the Swampland: Markus Dierigl

In this talk I will discuss the bordism groups of type IIB string theory taking into account non-trivial duality bundles. Our calculations show that the duality is anomalous unless one modifies the low energy effective action in a subtle way. Moreover, applying the Cobordism Conjecture, which demands that the bordism groups of a quantum gravity theory must vanish, we (re)discover the necessity to include various stringy objects, ranging from [p,q]-7-branes to orientifold planes.

Short talks

Matthew Magill: Stably classifying anomalous field theories.
Richie Dadhley; From Calabi-Yaus to G2 Mirror Symmetry

12:00 Lunch Break

Branes and Non-Invertible Symmetries: Iñaki García Etxebarria

N = 4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories with algebra so(4N)
and appropriate choices of global structure can have non-invertible
symmetries. I argue that these non-invertible symmetries are
represented in the holographic dual by branes, and derive the fusion
algebra of non-invertible symmetries from the worldvolume dynamics on
the branes.

Fika: Coffee Break

"Fika is a concept, a state of mind, an attitude and an important part of Swedish culture. Many Swedes consider that it is almost essential to make time for fika every day. It means making time for friends and colleagues to share a cup of coffee (or tea) and a little something to eat."

Thursday, 25 August

6d (1,0) SCFTs and Their Implications for the 4d Landscape: Craig Lawrie

I will discuss the construction of 6d (1,0) SCFTs from the perspective of the "atomic classification", focussing on an oft-overlooked subtlety whereby distinct SCFTs in fact share an effective description on the generic point of the tensor branch. We will see how to determine the difference in the Higgs branch operator spectrum from the atomic perspective, and how that agrees with a dual class S perspective. Next, I will discuss the global form of the flavor symmetry group for 6d (1,0) SCFTs, how that can be determined from the tensor branch, and what 4d N=2 SCFTs arise when compactifying said 6d SCFTs, with a non-simply-connected flavor group, on a torus with a non-trivial Stiefel--Whitney twist.

Symmetry TFTs for 3d QFTs from M-theory: Marieke van Beest

I will discuss the 4d Symmetry Field Theory (SymTFT) encoding higher-form symmetries and 't Hooft anomalies of 3d QFTs constructed in M-theory on C(Y_7) with ordinary and discrete fluxes. This SymTFT has applications to geometric engineering setups as well as brane constructions. For Y_7 a Sasaki-Einstein manifold, we develop technology to compute the SymTFT coefficients of discrete torsion gauge fields geometrically as intersections in CY_4=C(Y_7).

I will apply this in concrete examples of the AdS_4/CFT_3 correspondence, first considering the N=6 ABJ(M) theories and then a broad class of N=2 CS quiver theories. For ABJ(M) I will identify the M-theory realization of the BF-coupling which encodes the different global forms of the gauge group of the boundary theory, and give a geometric derivation of the 1-form symmetry anomaly of ABJ. For N=2 I will derive new 1-form and mixed 0-/1-form 't Hooft anomalies and show how characterizing extended operators provides new entries to the holographic dictionary.

12:00 Lunch Break

The higher dimensional swampland and a new string theory: Miguel Montero

I will review recent progress on the swampland in higher dimensions in connection to anomalies, and present a construction of a new component of moduli space with 16 supercharges in 9 dimensions.

Fika: Coffee Break

"Fika is a concept, a state of mind, an attitude and an important part of Swedish culture. Many Swedes consider that it is almost essential to make time for fika every day. It means making time for friends and colleagues to share a cup of coffee (or tea) and a little something to eat."

Friday, 26 August

Revisiting Heterotic Strings on ALE Spaces: Instantonic 6d Little Strings, 2-groups, T-duality, and F-theory: Michele del Zotto

We revisit the physics of heterotic strings on ALE singularities in light of recent developments in higher symmetries (and in particular the matching of higher group structure constants across T-duality), combined with our refined understanding of the physics of 6d theories over the past decade. We will chart T-dualities of heterotic little string instantons in presence of non-trivial flat connections at infinity, thus extending the analysis by Aspinwall-Morrison, and we will comment on the ALE geometric engineering limit of Heterotic strings.

12:00 Lunch Break

Discrete anomalies in 6d F-theory vacua: Thorsten Schimannek

Anomalies in 6d theories are cancelled by a generalized Green-Schwarz mechanism.
This should not only be true for local anomalies but also for global anomalies that in particular arise from discrete 0-form gauge symmetries.
Anomaly inflow further relates these discrete 6d anomalies to 't Hooft anomalies of corresponding global discrete symmetries on 2d worldsheet theories of non-critical strings.
The 't Hooft anomalies of these global symmetries can in turn be measured as a failure of modularity of the corresponding orbifold partition functions.
We will argue that in F-theory the elliptic genera with twisted boundary conditions are encoded in the topological string partition functions on various torus fibrations, that share the same Jacobian fibration, as well as certain non-commutative crepant resolutions.
The corresponding modular properties will allow us to obtain a precise geometric expression for the global anomaly in terms of a height pairing of a multi-section.
At the example of theories with Z3 symmetry we demonstrate that different values for the global anomaly distinguish theories that have otherwise identical massless spectra.
The talk is based on work in progress with M. Dierigl and P. Oehlmann.

Fika: Coffee Break

"Fika is a concept, a state of mind, an attitude and an important part of Swedish culture. Many Swedes consider that it is almost essential to make time for fika every day. It means making time for friends and colleagues to share a cup of coffee (or tea) and a little something to eat."