6d strings from new chiral gauge theories

TL;DR

Kim, Kim, and Park develop 2d gauge theories on the worldvolumes of self-dual strings in 6d $\mathcal{N}=(1,0)$ SCFTs, starting with the minimal non-Higgsable $SU(3)$ case and extending to $(E_6,E_6)$ conformal matter. They show these theories flow in the IR to $\mathcal{N}=(0,4)$ SCFTs whose moduli spaces match $SU(3)$ instanton moduli spaces, and whose elliptic genera reproduce Nekrasov sums and topological-string data. The authors then glue the $SU(3)$ strings with E-string sectors to model $(E_6,E_6)$ conformal matter, demonstrating an IR enhancement to $E_6\times E_6\times SU(3)$ and verifying anomaly inflow cancellations. Collectively, the work provides anomaly-consistent, UV-complete 2d descriptions of exceptional instanton strings and opens pathways to analyze strings in a broad class of 6d SCFTs and their relations to lower-dimensional theories.

Abstract

We study the 6d $\mathcal{N}=(1,0)$ superconformal field theory with smallest non-Higgsable gauge symmetry $SU(3)$. In particular, we propose new 2d gauge theory descriptions of its self-dual strings in the tensor branch. We use our gauge theories to compute the elliptic genera of the self-dual strings, which completely agree with the partial data known from topological strings. We further study the strings of the $(E_6,E_6)$ conformal matter by generalizing our 2d gauge theories. We also show that anomalies of all our gauge theories agree with the self-dual string anomalies computed by inflows from 6d.