Holographic thermal observables and M2-branes

Abstract

Abstract We use holography in conjunction with recent results from supersymmetric localization to compute certain thermal observables for 3d $$ \mathcal{N} $$ N = 2 holographic SCFTs arising on the worldvolume of N M2-branes. We obtain results for the thermal free energy density on S1 × ℝ2, the Casimir energy on T2 × ℝ, and the three leading coefficients in the large temperature limit of the free energy on S1 × S2 valid to subleading order in the large N limit. As a byproduct of our holographic analysis we also present a conjecture for the structure of the large temperature expansion of the thermal free energy of general 3d CFTs on S1 × S2.