Beyond triality: dual quiver gauge theories and little string theories

Abstract

The web of dual gauge theories engineered from a class of toric Calabi-Yau threefolds is explored. In previous work, we have argued for a triality structure by compiling evidence for the fact that every such manifold X_N,M (for given (N, M)) engineers three a priori different, weakly coupled quiver gauge theories in five dimensions. The strong coupling regime of the latter is in general described by Little String Theories. Furthermore, we also conjectured that the manifold X_N,M is dual to X_{N ′,M ′} if NM = N′M′ and gcd(N, M) = gcd(N′, M′). Combining this result with the triality structure, we currently argue for a large number of dual quiver gauge theories, whose instanton partition functions can be computed explicitly as specific expansions of the topological partition function ZN,M\[ {\mathcal{Z}}_{N,M} \] of X_N,M. We illustrate this web of dual theories by studying explicit examples in detail. We also undertake first steps in further analysing the extended moduli space of X_N,M with the goal of finding other dual gauge theories.