April 9, 2019
TITLE: Selected topics about 5d theories and geometry
ABSTRACT:
January 11, 2019
TITLE: Aspects of 5d SCFTs and their gauge theory phases
ABSTRACT: In this talk I will revist the geometric engineering of five-dimensional supersymmetric conformal field theories (SCFTs) in M-theory after Intrilligator, Morrison and Seiberg. This esablishes a conjectural bijection assigning to each local isolated Calabi-Yau three-fold singularity a five-dimensional superconformal field theory and viceversa. Focusing on the toric case, I will discuss applications of IIA/M-theory fiberwise duality (i.e. a peculiar instance of collapse) to characterizing the possible gauge theory phases of these systems. This geometric setup clarifies the notion of “UV duality” for such theories. Along the way, I will provide a novel gauge theoretical expression for the 5d prepotential, accounting correctly for the 5d parity anomaly. Based on the preprint arXiv:1812.10451, with Cyril Closset and Vivek Saxena.
