2014/08/08 by Massimo Bianchi, Stefano Cremonesi, Amihay Hanany +3 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1007/jhep10(2014)027
published as JHEP 1410:027,2014 · 40 pages, 13 figures
arxiv created 2014/08/08 · arxiv updated 2014/10/14
We study renormalization group flows among N=1 SCFTs realized on the worldvolume of D3-branes probing toric Calabi-Yau singularities, thus admitting a brane tiling description. The flows are triggered by masses for adjoint or vector-like pairs of bifundamentals and are generalizations of the Klebanov-Witten construction of the N=1 theory for the conifold starting from the N=2 theory for the C2/Z2 orbifold. In order to preserve the toric condition pairs of masses with opposite signs have to be switched on. We offer a geometric interpretation of the flows as complex deformations of the Calabi-Yau singularity preserving the toric condition. For orbifolds, we support this interpretation by an explicit string amplitude computation of the gauge invariant mass terms generated by imaginary self-dual 3-form fluxes in the twisted sector. In agreement with the holographic a-theorem, the volume of the Sasaki-Einstein 5-base of the Calabi-Yau cone always increases along the flow.