Chiral Gauge Theories from D-Branes

Abstract

We construct brane configurations leading to chiral four dimensional N=1 supersymmetric gauge theories. The brane realizations consist of intersecting Neveu-Schwarz five-branes and Dirichlet four-branes in non-flat spacetime backgrounds. We discuss in some detail the construction in a C^2/Z_M orbifold background. The infrared theory on the four-brane worldvolume is a four dimensional N=1 SU(N)^M gauge theory with chiral matter representations. We discuss various consistency checks and show that the spectral curves describing the Coulomb phase of the theory can be obtained once the orbifold brane construction is embedded in M-theory. We also discuss the addition of extra vectorlike matter and other interesting generalizations.

Figures (2)

• Figure 1: The Type IIA brane configuration for the ${ Z Z}_M$ orbifold models. There are $N$ physical four-branes stretched between the NS five branes, plus their ${ Z Z}_M$ images. The six branes, if present, give extra vectorlike matter. The bending of the NS branes is not shown in this figure.
• Figure 2: The Type IIA brane configuration for a class of generalized ${ Z Z}_M$ orbifold models. There are $N$ physical four-branes stretched between the first pair of NS five branes, plus their ${ Z Z}_M$ images. There are $N_f$ physical four-branes stretched between the second pair of NS five branes, plus their ${ Z Z}_M$ images.