Localized modes at a D-brane—O-plane intersection and heterotic Alice strings

Abstract

We study a system of N c D3-branes intersecting D7-branes and O7-planes in 1 + 1-dimensions. We use anomaly cancellation and string dualities to argue that there must be chiral fermion zero-modes on the D3-branes which are localized near the O7-planes. Away from the orientifold limit we verify this by using index theory as well as explicit construction of the zero-modes. This system is related to F-theory on K3 and heterotic matrix string theory, and the heterotic strings are related to Alice string defects in N = 4 Super-Yang-Mills. In the limit of large N c we find an AdS 3 dual of the heterotic matrix string CFT.

Supersymmetric gauge theories, intersecting branes and free fermions

“…40), are also given in [37]. The crucial point is that both elements of those pair involve algebras of the same type, which confirms and agrees with the string theoretic orientifold analysis above.…”

Defect branes as Alice strings

“…In the presence of Alice strings, "a charge with no localized source," called a Cheshire charge [8,9], plays an important role in the discussion of the charge conservation law. In this paper, we will examine an analogy between Alice strings and defect branes in string theory (see [16] for an earlier study on a realization of Alice string in string theory).…”

Deformation of $$ \mathcal{N} $$ = 4 SYM with varying couplings via fluxes and intersecting branes

“…A typical example is a system with D3-branes embedded in a background with [p, q] 7-branes that appear as codimension 2 defects in the D3-brane world-volume [10][11][12]. 3 In this system, it is known that the complex coupling (2.9) is not a constant but depends holomorphically on a complex coordinate which is a complex combination of 2 spatial coordinates transverse to the 7-branes.…”

“…This is the case studied in [10][11][12]. (See also section 3.3 in [2]) It is related to the effective theory on the D3-branes embedded in a 7-brane background as mentioned in the introduction.…”