Four-dimensional SYM probes in wrapped M5-brane backgrounds

Abstract

We study the worldvolume supersymmetric gauge theory of M-branes probing backgrounds corresponding to wrapped M5-branes. In the case of M5-branes wrapping a 2-cycle in two-dimensional complex space, we use M2-brane probes to compute the BPS spectra of the corresponding N=2 gauge theory as well as M5-brane probes to calculate field theory parameters such as the gauge coupling, theta angle and complex scalar moduli space metric. This background describes a large class of Hanany-Witten type models when dimensionally reduced to Type IIA 10d string theory. We calculate the instanton action using a D0-brane probe in this limit. For the case of M5-branes wrapping a 2-cycle in three-dimensional complex space, we firstly show an alternative method to derive this solution involving the projection conditions and certain spinor bilinear differential equations. We also consider M5-brane probes of this background, and analyse the corresponding N=1 MQCD gauge theory parameters. In general there were no supergravity corrections to field theory parameters when compared to previous flat-space field theory analysis.