Magnetic Quivers from Brane Webs with O5 Planes
Antoine Bourget, Julius F. Grimminger, Amihay Hanany, Marcus Sperling, Zhenghao Zhong
TL;DR
The article develops a comprehensive magnetic-quiver framework for 5d $\mathcal{N}=1$ gauge theories with orthogonal and symplectic gauge groups, realized via 5-brane webs with O5 and O7 planes. It provides explicit unitary-orthosymplectic and unitary magnetic quivers for ${\rm Sp}(k)$ theories with fundamental matter, validates them against known fixed-point symmetry enhancements, and computes associated Higgs-branch data, including dimensions and Hasse diagrams, at both finite and infinite coupling. The work extends the program of reading Higgs-branch geometry from brane data to a broader class of theories, revealing rich structures such as unions of cones for certain flavour counts and exceptional $E_n$ patterns at the fixed point. It also connects these magnetic-quiver descriptions with class-S-inspired constructions and cross-checks them against alternative brane setups (e.g., O7$^-$), suggesting a robust, dual perspective on 5d Higgs branches and their fixed-point geometries with practical implications for identifying non-perturbative fixed points and their moduli spaces.
Abstract
Magnetic quivers have led to significant progress in the understanding of gauge theories with 8 supercharges at UV fixed points. For a given low-energy gauge theory realised via a Type II brane construction, there exist magnetic quivers for the Higgs branches at finite and infinite gauge coupling. Comparing these moduli spaces allows to study the non-perturbative effects when transitioning to the fixed point. For 5d $\mathcal{N}=1$ SQCD, 5-brane webs have been an important tool for deriving magnetic quivers. In this work, the emphasis is placed on 5-brane webs with orientifold 5-planes which give rise to 5d theories with orthogonal or symplectic gauge groups. For this set-up, the magnetic quiver prescription is derived and contrasted against a unitary magnetic quiver description extracted from an O$7^-$ construction. Further validation is achieved by a derivation of the associated Hasse diagrams. An important class of families considered are the orthogonal exceptional $E_n$ families ($-\infty < n \leq 8$), realised as infinite coupling Higgs branches of $\mathrm{Sp}(k)$ gauge theories with fundamental matter. In particular, the moduli spaces are realised by a novel type of magnetic quivers, called unitary-orthosymplectic quivers.