2023/08/11 by Rastelli, Leonardo, Rayhaun, Brandon C. · 2 citations
#FOS: Mathematics #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) #Number Theory (math.NT) #Quantum Algebra (math.QA)
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2308.06312
By leveraging the physics of the Higgs branch, we argue that the conformal central charges a and c of an arbitrary 4d N=2 superconformal field theory (SCFT) are rational numbers. Our proof of the rationality of c is conditioned on a well-supported conjecture about how the Higgs branch of an SCFT is encoded in its protected chiral algebra. To establish the rationality of a, we further rely on a widely-believed technical assumption on the high-temperature limit of the superconformal index.