We show that the conformal anomaly for N M 5-branes grows like N 3 . The method we employ relates Coulomb branch interactions in six dimensions to interactions in four dimensions using supersymmetry. This leads to a relation between the six-dimensional conformal anomaly and the conformal anomaly of N=4 Yang-Mills.Along the way, we determine the structure of the four derivative interactions for the toroidally compactified (2, 0) theory, while encountering interesting novelties in the structure of the six derivative interactions.

We argue that the heterotic string does not have classical vacua corresponding to de Sitter space-times of dimension four or higher. The same conclusion applies to type II vacua in the absence of RR fluxes. Our argument extends prior supergravity no-go results to regimes of high curvature. We discuss the interpretation of the heterotic result from the perspective of dual type II orientifold constructions. Our result suggests that the genericity arguments used in string landscape discussions should be viewed with caution.

In this note, we describe supersymmetric backgrounds for the four-dimensional maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory. As an extension of the method of Festuccia and Seiberg to sixteen supercharges in four dimensions, we utilize the coupling of the gauge theory to maximally extended conformal supergravity. Included among the fields of the conformal supergravity multiplet is the complexified coupling parameter of the gauge theory; therefore, backgrounds with spacetime varying coupling -such as appear in F-theory and Janus configurations -are naturally included in this formalism. We demonstrate this with a few examples from past literature.