Supergravity Backgrounds for Four-Dimensional Maximally Supersymmetric Yang-Mills

Abstract

In this note, we describe supersymmetric backgrounds for the four-dimensional maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory. As an extension of the method of Festuccia and Seiberg to sixteen supercharges in four dimensions, we utilize the coupling of the gauge theory to maximally extended conformal supergravity. Included among the fields of the conformal supergravity multiplet is the complexified coupling parameter of the gauge theory; therefore, backgrounds with spacetime varying coupling--such as appear in F-theory and Janus configurations--are naturally included in this formalism. We demonstrate this with a few examples from past literature.