The gauge dual of Romans mass

TL;DR

This work extends the ABJM holographic duality by turning on a Romans mass $F_0$, identifying its dual as a deformation where $F_0$ contributes to the two Chern–Simons levels, and showing that this leads naturally to four fixed points with differing supersymmetry and flavor symmetry.The authors establish a general mapping $F_0 ightarrow k_1+k_2$ and develop a framework to study hierarchies of theories with unequal levels, including ${ m N}=0,1,2,3$ fixed points, via perturbative RG arguments and protected operator analysis.They provide gravity dual constructions for the ${ m N}=0$ and ${ m N}=1$ cases, including flux quantization and probe-brane checks, while noting the challenges and incomplete status for explicit duals at ${ m N}=2$ and ${ m N}=3$, which likely require ${ m SU}(3) imes{ m SU}(3)$-structure solutions.Overall, the paper demonstrates how a nonzero Romans mass reshapes the AdS$_4$/CFT$_3$ landscape by coupling to CS levels, elaborates how to classify the resulting fixed points, and outlines concrete gravity-side realizations and tests that connect field-theory data to flux and brane configurations.

Abstract

We deform the recently proposed holographic duality between the ABJM N=6 Chern-Simons-matter theory and type IIA string theory in AdS4xCP3. We add a non-zero Romans mass F_0, whose dual we identify as the sum of the Chern-Simons levels for the two gauge groups. One can naturally identify four different theories, with different amounts of supersymmetry and of flavor symmetry.