N=1 super Yang-Mills theories and wrapped branes

We obtain a supergravity solution arising when D6-branes are wrapped on coassociative four-cycles of constant curvature in seven manifolds of G_2 holonomy. The solutions preserve two supercharges and thus represent supergravity duals of three dimensional Yang-Mills with N=1 supersymmetry. When uplifted to eleven dimensions our solution describes M-theory on the background of an eight manifold with Spin(7) holonomy.

This is a pedagogical and extended version of the results published in Refs. [1,2] and presented by the authors in various talks during the last year. We discuss the type II D-branes (both regular and fractional) of the orbifold R^{1,5}*R^4/Z_2, we determine their corresponding supergravity solution and show how this can be used to study the properties of N=2 super Yang-Mills. Supergravity is able to reproduce the perturbative moduli space of the gauge theory, while it does n...

We construct D=10 supergravity solutions corresponding to type IIB fivebranes wrapping a two-sphere in a Calabi-Yau two-fold. These are related in the IR to the large N limit of pure N=2 SU(N) super Yang-Mills theory. We show that the singularities in the IR correspond to the wrapped branes being distributed on a ring. We analyse the dynamics of a probe fivebrane and show that it incorporates the full perturbative structure of the gauge theory. For a class of solutions the tw...

The Maldacena-Nunez solution is generalized to include a number of integration constants, one of which controls the resolution of the singularity of the wrapped D5-brane background. Some features of the dual pure N=1 super Yang-Mills (SYM) theory are calculated, amongst which the gluino condensate, the beta function of the gauge coupling and a brane probe potential, which is related to the Veneziano-Yankielowicz effective potential. Each integration constant has a precise mea...

We consider several solutions of supergravity with reduced supersymmetry which are related to wrapped branes, and elaborate on their geometrical and physical interpretation. The Killing spinors are computed for each configuration. In particular, all the known metrics on the conifold and all G_2 holonomy metrics with cohomogeneity one and S^3xS^3 principal orbits are constructed from D=8 gauged supergravity in a unified formalism. The addition of 4-form fluxes piercing the unw...

We consider supergravity configuration of D5 branes wrapped on supersymmetric 2-cycles and use it to calculate one-point and two-point Green functions of some special operators in N=2 super Yang-Mills theory. We show that Green functions obtained from supergravity include two very different parts. One of them corresponds to perturbative results of quantum field theory, and another is a non-perturbative effect which corresponds to contribution from instantons with fractional c...

We discuss various aspects of gauge theories realized on the world-volume of wrapped branes. In particular we analyze the coupling of SYM operators to space-time fields both in N=1 and N=2 models and give a description of the gluino condensate in the Maldacena-Nunez N=1 solution. We also explore the seven dimensional BPS equations relevant for these solutions and their generalizations.

We explicitly construct a solution of eight-dimensional gauged supergravity representing D6-branes wrapped on six-cycles inside Calabi-Yau fourfolds. The solution preserves two supercharges and asymptotically is a cone with the coset space SU(2)^4/U(1)^3 as its base. It is shown to correspond to an M-theory compactification on a Calabi-Yau manifold with SU(5) holonomy and we discuss in detail its geometrical and topological features. We also construct a family of related high...

We find the gravity solution corresponding to a large number of NS or D fivebranes wrapped on a two sphere so that we have pure ${\cal N}=1$ super Yang-Mills in the IR. The supergravity solution is smooth, it shows confinement and it breaks the $U(1)_R$ chiral symmetry in the appropriate way. When the gravity approximation is valid the masses of glueballs are comparable to the masses of Kaluza Klein states on the fivebrane, but if we could quantize strings on this background ...

We discuss the role of D0-branes as instantons in the construction of SU(N) Super Yang-Mills and Super QCD theories in four space-time dimensions with D4-, D6- and NS-branes. [To appear in the proceedings of the conference "Quantum Aspects of Gauge Theories, Supersymmetry and Unification", held at Neuchatel University, Neuchatel, Switzerland, 18--23 September 1997.]