Defects of Theory X and SCFTs in various dimensions

by Aswin Balasubramanian (DESY)

Thursday 7 Jan 2016, 14:15 → 15:15 Europe/Berlin

Seminar Room 2 (DESY, building 2a)

I will discuss how the mere existence of a family of six dimensional SCFTs (varyingly called "Theory X", "The (0,2) Theory", "The M5 brane theory" ...) and its defect operators leads to a vast number of Lagrangian and Non-Lagrangian Field theories in lower dimensions.The six dimensional viewpoint also aids in the study of non-perturbative aspects of these lower dimensional theories. As a case study, I will focus on a particular family of defect operators in the six dimensional theory that have four dimensional world volume. Understanding these defects involves a nice interplay of ideas from SUSY field theories, Representation Theory and Geometry. These defects also play important roles in the AGT correspondence and in the Gauge Theory Approach to Geometric Langlands. I will briefly sketch how this comes about.