N = 1 supersymmetric renormalization group flows from IIB supergravity

Abstract

We consider N = 1 supersymmetric renormalization group flows of N = 4 Yang-Mills theory from the perspective of ten-dimensional IIB supergravity. We explicitly construct the complete ten-dimensional lift of the flow in which exactly one chiral superfield becomes massive (the LS flow). We also examine the ten-dimensional metric and dilaton configurations for the "super-QCD" flow (the GPPZ flow) in which all chiral superfields become massive. We show that the latter flow generically gives rise to a dielectric 7-brane in the infra-red, but the solution contains a singularity that may be interpreted as a "duality averaged" ring distribution of 5-branes wrapped on S2. At special values of the parameters the singularity simplifies to a pair of S-dual branes with (p, q) charge (1, ±1).