Instanton operators and symmetry enhancement in 5d supersymmetric gauge theories

Abstract

Supersymmetric gauge theories in five dimensions often exhibit less symmetry than the ultraviolet fixed points from which they flow. The fixed points might have larger flavor symmetry or they might even be secretly six-dimensional theories on S^1. Here we provide a simple criterion when such symmetry enhancement in the ultraviolet should occur, by a direct study of the fermionic zero modes around one-instanton operators.

v3: 20 pages; an error in Sec. 4.2 corrected, overall conclusion unchanged. published version