Abstract
Supergravity solutions related to large pure gauge theories with eight supercharges have recently been shown to give rise to an “enhançon,” a new type of hypersurface made of D-branes. We show that enhançons also arise in similar situations pertaining to and gauge theories, using orientifolds. Enhançons therefore appear to come in types A, B, C, and D. The latter three differ globally from type A by having an extra identification, and are distinguished locally by their subleading behavior in large N. We focus mainly on (2+1)-dimensional gauge theory, where a relation to M theory and the Atiyah-Hitchin and Taub-Newman-Unti-Tamburino (NUT) manifolds enables the construction of the smooth supergravity solution and the study of some of the corrections. The role of the enhançon in 11-dimensional supergravity is also uncovered. There is a close relation to certain multimonopole moduli space problems.
- Received 3 April 2000
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.62.126010
©2000 American Physical Society