String Theory Seminar
Thursday, October 11, 2001
M. Ronen Plesser
(Duke University),
`Toric duality' is Seiberg duality
We study four N=1 SU(N)6 gauge theories, with bi-fundamental
chiral matter and a superpotential. In the infrared, these gauge theories all
realize the low-energy world-volume description of N coincident
D3-branes transverse to the complex cone over a del Pezzo surface
dP3 which is the blowup of P2 at three generic points.
Therefore, the four gauge theories are expected to fall into the same
universality class - an example of a phenomenon that has been termed "toric
duality". However, little independent evidence has been given that such
theories are infrared-equivalent. In fact, we show that the four gauge
theories are related by the N=1 duality of Seiberg, vindicating this
expectation. We also study holographic aspects of these gauge theories. In
particular we relate the spectrum of chiral operators in the gauge theories
to wrapped D3-brane states in the AdS dual description. We finally
demonstrate that the other known examples of toric duality are related by
N=1 duality, a fact which we conjecture holds generally.
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