Adding fluxes to consistent truncations: IIB supergravity on ${\rm AdS}_3 \times S^3 \times S^3 \times S^1$

Abstract

We use $E_{8(8)}$ Exceptional Field Theory to construct the consistent truncation of IIB supergravity on $S^3 \times S^3 \times S^1$ to maximal 3-dimensional ${\cal N}=16$ gauged supergravity containing the ${\cal N}=(4,4)$ AdS$_3$ vacuum. We explain how to achieve this by adding a 7-form flux to the $S^1$ reduction of the dyonic $E_{7(7)}$ truncation on $S^3 \times S^3$ previously constructed in the literature. Our truncation Ansatz includes, in addition to the ${\cal N}=(4,4)$ vacuum, a host of moduli breaking some or all of the supersymmetries. We explicitly construct the uplift of a subset of these to construct new supersymmetric and non-supersymmetric AdS$_3$ vacua of IIB string theory, which include a range of perturbatively stable non-supersymmetric 10-d vacua. Moreover, we show how the supersymmetric direction of the moduli space of AdS$_3$ vacua of six-dimensional gauged supergravity studied in arXiv:2111.01167 is compactified upon lifting to 10 dimensions, and find evidence of T-duality playing a role in global aspects of the moduli space. Along the way, we also derive the form of 3-dimensional ${\cal N}=16$ gauged supergravity in terms of the embedding tensor and rule out a 10-/11-dimensional origin of some 3-dimensional gauged supergravities.