Monodromy Defects in Massive Type IIA

TL;DR

This work constructs and analyzes co-dimension 2 monodromy defects in holography for massive Type IIA, proposing duals to 6d $(1,0)$ CFTs realized on NS5-D6-D8 brane systems and to the 5d Sp$(N)$ fixed point theory. It builds defect geometries via consistent truncations to lower-dimensional gauged supergravities and uplifts them to massive IIA, computing defect entanglement entropy and exploring field theory interpretations. The authors show that for 3d defects the defect entanglement entropy can be written as a linear combination of the defect free energy and the conformal weight of the defect, and they construct new co-dimension 2 monodromy defects on Riemann surfaces and spindles, including explicit brane realizations and baryon-vertex analyses. These results extend the holographic dictionary for monodromy defects across 6d and 5d CFTs, and open avenues for RG-flow studies and monotone quantities in defect CFTs.

Abstract

In this paper we study solutions to massive Type IIA supergravity which we propose are dual to co-dimension 2 monodromy defects in 6d (1,0) CFTs realised in NS5-D6-D8 brane systems, as well as in the 5d Sp(N) fixed point theory. In the first case the defects are studied holographically as solutions to 7d $U(1)$ gauged supergravity that asymptote locally to its maximally supersymmetric $\text{AdS}_7$ vacuum away from the defects. In the second case they are dual to solutions to 6d $U(1)^2$ gauged supergravity that asymptote to its maximally supersymmetric $\text{AdS}_6$ vacuum. These solutions are then uplifted to massive Type IIA supergravity using known consistent truncations previously constructed in the literature. We compute the defect entanglement entropy and provide evidence that for the 3d defects, the entanglement entropy can be written as a linear combination of the free energy and conformal weight of the defect. Finally, we construct new co-dimension 2 monodromy defects in 6d and 5d CFTs compactified on Riemann surfaces and/or spindles.

Figures (2)

• Figure 1: Baryon vertex configuration for the 6d ambient theory.
• Figure 2: Plot of ${\cal{C}}_D^{(5)}$, in units of $F^{\text{S}^5}$, as a function of $n$ and $g \mu_F$.