Zooming out of AdS$_4 \times$S$^2 \times$S$^2$: The Branes behind the CFT's
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2026
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| author | Bena, Iosif Bourget, Antoine Dulac, Raphaël Toulikas, Dimitrios Warner, Nicholas P. |
| author_facet | Bena, Iosif Bourget, Antoine Dulac, Raphaël Toulikas, Dimitrios Warner, Nicholas P. |
| contents | We reveal the supersymmetric brane configurations that give rise to AdS$_4\times$S$^2\times$S$^2$ supergravity solutions, which are holographic duals to three-dimensional $N=4$ CFTs or to conformal boundaries and domain walls of four-dimensional $N=4$ SYM. We show that these solutions preserve the same Killing spinors as orthogonal D3, D5 and NS5 branes in flat space, and that the singular sources of these solutions correspond to semi-infinite D3-D5 and D3-NS5 spikes.
We track these solutions all the way from the weak-coupling regime of parameters, where the branes do not backreact, to the supergravity regime. We explain how the AdS$_4$ factor arises from certain universal self-similar bending regions of the five-branes, whose steepness is the same as the weak-coupling linking numbers. We also propose a brane configuration that gives rise to the Janus interface solutions.
Our construction gives a clear geometric explanation of the Gaiotto-Witten "good-bad-ugly" classification of eight-supercharge theories: only good theories have five-branes that do not cross when back-reacting, and end up sourcing an AdS$_4\times$S$^2\times$S$^2$ solution. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_15731 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Zooming out of AdS$_4 \times$S$^2 \times$S$^2$: The Branes behind the CFT's Bena, Iosif Bourget, Antoine Dulac, Raphaël Toulikas, Dimitrios Warner, Nicholas P. High Energy Physics - Theory We reveal the supersymmetric brane configurations that give rise to AdS$_4\times$S$^2\times$S$^2$ supergravity solutions, which are holographic duals to three-dimensional $N=4$ CFTs or to conformal boundaries and domain walls of four-dimensional $N=4$ SYM. We show that these solutions preserve the same Killing spinors as orthogonal D3, D5 and NS5 branes in flat space, and that the singular sources of these solutions correspond to semi-infinite D3-D5 and D3-NS5 spikes. We track these solutions all the way from the weak-coupling regime of parameters, where the branes do not backreact, to the supergravity regime. We explain how the AdS$_4$ factor arises from certain universal self-similar bending regions of the five-branes, whose steepness is the same as the weak-coupling linking numbers. We also propose a brane configuration that gives rise to the Janus interface solutions. Our construction gives a clear geometric explanation of the Gaiotto-Witten "good-bad-ugly" classification of eight-supercharge theories: only good theories have five-branes that do not cross when back-reacting, and end up sourcing an AdS$_4\times$S$^2\times$S$^2$ solution. |
| title | Zooming out of AdS$_4 \times$S$^2 \times$S$^2$: The Branes behind the CFT's |
| topic | High Energy Physics - Theory |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.15731 |