Supersymmetric deformations of 3D SCFTs from tri-sasakian truncation

Abstract

We holographically study supersymmetric deformations of $N=3$ and $N=1$ superconformal field theories (SCFTs) in three dimensions using four-dimensional $N=4$ gauged supergravity coupled to three-vector multiplets with non-semisimple $SO(3)\ltimes (\mathbf{T}^3,\hat{\mathbf{T}}^3)$ gauge group. This gauged supergravity can be obtained from a truncation of eleven-dimensional supergravity on a tri-sasakian manifold and admits both $N=1,3$ supersymmetric and stable non-supersymmetric $AdS_4$ critical points. We analyze the BPS equations for $SO(3)$ singlet scalars in details and study possible supersymmetric solutions. A number of RG flows to non-conformal field theories and half-supersymmetric domain walls are found, and many of them can be given analytically. Apart from these "flat" domain walls, we also consider $AdS_3$-sliced domain wall solutions describing two-dimensional conformal defects with $N=(1,0)$ supersymmetry within the dual $N=1$ field theory while this type of solutions does not exist in the $N=3$ case.