Wild Wall Crossing and BPS Giants

We study the BPS spectrum and walls of marginal stability of the $\mathcal{N}=2$ supersymmetric theory in four dimensions with gauge group SU(n) and $n\le N_{f}<2n$ fundamental flavours at the root of the Higgs branch. The strong-coupling spectrum of this theory was conjectured in hep-th/9902134 to coincide with that of the two-dimensional supersymmetric $\mathbb{CP}^{2n-N_{f}-1}$ sigma model. Using the Kontsevich--Soibelman wall-crossing formula, we start with the conjecture...

We study $\mathcal{N}=2$ supersymmetric Yang--Mills theory in four dimensions and then compactify it on $\mathbb{R}^{3}\times S^{1}$. The gauge symmetry of the theory is broken by a vacuum expectation value of the scalar field, which parametrises the moduli space. The spectrum of BPS states, carrying electric and magnetic charges, is piece-wise constant, changing only when the vacuum expectation value crosses the so-called walls of marginal stability. Kontsevich and Soibelman...

An important question in the study of N=2 supersymmetric string or field theories is to compute the jump of the BPS spectrum across walls of marginal stability in the space of parameters or vacua. I survey four apparently different answers for this problem, two of which are based on the mathematics of generalized Donaldson-Thomas invariants (the Kontsevich-Soibelman and the Joyce-Song formulae), while the other two are based on the physics of multi-centered black hole solutio...

We give an elementary physical derivation of the Kontsevich-Soibelman wall crossing formula, valid for any theory with a 4d N=2 supergravity description. Our argument leads to a slight generalization of the formula, which relates monodromy to the BPS spectrum.

The BPS state spectrum in four-dimensional gauge theories or string vacua with N=2 supersymmetries is well known to depend on the values of the parameters or moduli at spatial infinity. The BPS index is locally constant, but discontinuous across real codimension-one walls where some of the BPS states decay. By postulating that BPS states are bound states of more elementary constituents carrying their own degrees of freedom and interacting via supersymmetric quantum mechanics,...

I review my work together with Piljin Yi on the spectrum of BPS-saturated states in N = 2 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories. In an M-theory description, such states are realized as certain two-brane configurations. We first show how the central charge of the N = 2 algebra arises from the two-form central charge of the eleven-dimensional supersymmetry algebra, and derive the condition for a two-brane configuration to be BPS-saturated. We then discuss how the topology of the t...

We explore the relationship between four-dimensional N=2 quantum field theories and their associated BPS quivers. For a wide class of theories including super-Yang-Mills theories, Argyres-Douglas models, and theories defined by M5-branes on punctured Riemann surfaces, there exists a quiver which implicitly characterizes the field theory. We study various aspects of this correspondence including the quiver interpretation of flavor symmetries, gauging, decoupling limits, and fi...

We consider BPS states in a large class of d=4, N=2 field theories, obtained by reducing six-dimensional (2,0) superconformal field theories on Riemann surfaces, with defect operators inserted at points of the Riemann surface. Further dimensional reduction on S^1 yields sigma models, whose target spaces are moduli spaces of Higgs bundles on Riemann surfaces with ramification. In the case where the Higgs bundles have rank 2, we construct canonical Darboux coordinate systems on...

We define "BPS graphs" on punctured Riemann surfaces associated with $A_{N-1}$ theories of class $\mathcal{S}$. BPS graphs provide a bridge between two powerful frameworks for studying the spectrum of BPS states: spectral networks and BPS quivers. They arise from degenerate spectral networks at maximal intersections of walls of marginal stability on the Coulomb branch. While the BPS spectrum is ill-defined at such intersections, a BPS graph captures a useful basis of elementa...

We calculate in a very simple way the spectrum of giant magnon bound states at strong coupling in N=4 SYM, by utilizing the description of the field theory vacuum in terms of a condensate of eigenvalues of commuting matrices. We further show that these calculations can be understood in terms of the central charge extension that permits the calculation of BPS masses in the Coulomb branch of N=4 SYM. This paper shows further evidence that the strong coupling expansion of the ma...