String Theory seminar - Masazumi Honda Seminar

Abstract: We study supersymmetry breaking deformations of the N=1 5d fixed point known as E1, the UV completion of SU(2) super-Yang-Mills. The phases of the non-supersymmetric theory can be characterized by Chern-Simons terms involving background U(1) gauge fields, allowing us to identify a phase transition at strong coupling. We propose that this may signify the emergence of a non-trivial, non-supersymmetric CFT in d=4+1 dimensions. This talk is based on a collaboration with Pietro Benetti Genolini, Hee-Cheol Kim, David Tong and Cumrun Vafa.