Bootstrapping BPS spectra of 5d/6d field theories

Abstract

Abstract We propose a systematic approach to computing the BPS spectrum of any 5d/6d supersymmetric quantum field theory in Coulomb phases, which admits either gauge theory descriptions or geometric descriptions, based on the Nakajima-Yoshioka’s blowup equations. We provide a significant generalization of the blowup equation approach in terms of both properly quantized magnetic fluxes on the blowup $$ \hat{\mathrm{\mathbb{C}}} $$ ℂ ̂ 2 and the effective prepotential for 5d/6d field theories on the Omega background which is uniquely determined by the Chern-Simons couplings on their Coulomb branches. We employ our method to compute BPS spectra of all rank-1 and rank-2 5d Kaluza-Klein (KK) theories descending from 6d $$ \mathcal{N} $$ N = (1, 0) superconformal field theories (SCFTs) compactified on a circle with/without twist. We also discuss various 5d SCFTs and KK theories of higher ranks, which include a few exotic cases such as new rank-1 and rank-2 5d SCFTs engineered with frozen singularity as well as the 5d SU(3)8 gauge theory currently having neither a brane web nor a smooth shrinkable geometric description. The results serve as non-trivial checks for a large class of non-trivial dualities among 5d theories and also as independent evidences for the existence of certain exotic theories.