Bordisms between 9d type IIB supergravities and commutator widths of duality groups

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Heras, Camilo las, Ruiz, Ignacio
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Heras, Camilo las
Ruiz, Ignacio
author_facet Heras, Camilo las
Ruiz, Ignacio
contents We study the topological properties of bordisms interpolating between different 9d gauged supergravities obtained from compactification of type IIB string theory on $\mathbb{S}^1$ with a non-trivial $\mathsf{SL}(2,\mathbb{Z})$ bundle. We describe how such bordisms implement the needed monodromies through stacks of $[p,q]$ 7-branes or gravitational solitons of non-trivial topology. For the later mechanism, we see that the topology of the bordism becomes increasingly complicated for large monodromies, which results in the associated bordisms being arbitrarily suppressed, against expectations on the breaking of global symmetries in Quantum Gravity. Motivated by this, we propose a refinement of the Swampland Cobordism Conjecture for the first bordism group $Ω_1({\rm B}G)$ with a $G$ duality bundle. We argue that even if gravitational solitons can realize the monodromies associated with elements of the commutator subgroup of $G$, if the number of needed commutators is unbounded (in other words, the commutator width of $G$ diverges) then an infinite number of duality defects realizing elements in $G$ need to be included. We test this proposal for different duality groups $G$, and see that our expectations are realized, often in non-trivial ways.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_15276
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
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spellingShingle Bordisms between 9d type IIB supergravities and commutator widths of duality groups
Heras, Camilo las
Ruiz, Ignacio
High Energy Physics - Theory
We study the topological properties of bordisms interpolating between different 9d gauged supergravities obtained from compactification of type IIB string theory on $\mathbb{S}^1$ with a non-trivial $\mathsf{SL}(2,\mathbb{Z})$ bundle. We describe how such bordisms implement the needed monodromies through stacks of $[p,q]$ 7-branes or gravitational solitons of non-trivial topology. For the later mechanism, we see that the topology of the bordism becomes increasingly complicated for large monodromies, which results in the associated bordisms being arbitrarily suppressed, against expectations on the breaking of global symmetries in Quantum Gravity. Motivated by this, we propose a refinement of the Swampland Cobordism Conjecture for the first bordism group $Ω_1({\rm B}G)$ with a $G$ duality bundle. We argue that even if gravitational solitons can realize the monodromies associated with elements of the commutator subgroup of $G$, if the number of needed commutators is unbounded (in other words, the commutator width of $G$ diverges) then an infinite number of duality defects realizing elements in $G$ need to be included. We test this proposal for different duality groups $G$, and see that our expectations are realized, often in non-trivial ways.
title Bordisms between 9d type IIB supergravities and commutator widths of duality groups
topic High Energy Physics - Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.15276