Codimension-two defects and Argyres-Douglas theories from outer-automorphism twist in 6d $(2,0)$ theories

Abstract

The 6d $(2,0)$ theory has codimension-one symmetry defects associated to the outer-automorphism group of the underlying ADE Lie algebra. These symmetry defects give rise to twisted sectors of codimension-two defects that are either regular or irregular corresponding to simple or higher order poles of the Higgs field. In this paper, we perform a systematic study of twisted irregular codimension-two defects generalizing our earlier work in the untwisted case. In a class S setup, such twisted defects engineer 4d ${\mathcal N}=2$ superconformal field theories of the Argyres-Douglas type whose flavor symmetries are (subgroups of) non-simply-laced Lie groups. We propose formulae for the conformal and flavor central charges of these twisted theories, accompanied by nontrivial consistency checks. We also identify the 2d chiral algebra (vertex operator algebra) of a subclass of these theories and determine their Higgs branch moduli space from the associated variety of the chiral algebra.