Abstract: What is the string theory dual to 4d N=2 Super Yang Mills? Motivated by this question, I will revisit some “noncritical” superstring models: these are string theories defined in less than ten spacetime dimensions. Focusing on the setup with 6d Poincare’ invariance, I will explain how a careful worldsheet analysis allows to identify the leading-order effective theories for the lowest modes. These are seven-dimensional, maximally supersymmetric gauged supergravities. The noncritical string can be viewed as a special case of a discrete series of backgrounds labelled by an integer k: the “noncritical” value is k = 2, while for k → ∞ one recovers a weakly-curved 10d target space. We will discuss the worldsheet approach by boundary states and BPS solutions to the supergravity equations of motion.
Link: Zoom
AnLy: https://sites.google.com/view/anlystringsandfields