SYM on Quotients of Spheres and Complex Projective Spaces

Abstract

We introduce a generic procedure to reduce a supersymmetric Yang-Mills (SYM) theory along the Hopf fiber of squashed $S^{2r-1}$ with $U(1)^r$ isometry, down to the $\mathbb{CP}^{r-1}$ base. This amounts to fixing a Killing vector $v$ generating a $U(1)\subset U(1)^r$ rotation and dimensionally reducing either along $v$ or along another direction contained in $U(1)^r$. To perform such reduction we introduce a $\mathbb{Z}_p$ quotient freely acting along one of the two fibers. For fixed $p$ the resulting manifolds $S^{2r-1}/\mathbb{Z}_p\equiv L^{2r-1}(p,\pm 1)$ are a higher dimensional generalization of lens spaces. In the large $p$ limit the fiber shrinks and effectively we find theories living on the base manifold. Starting from $\mathcal{N}=2$ SYM on $S^3$ and $\mathcal{N}=1$ SYM on $S^5$ we compute the perturbative partition functions on $L^{2r-1}(p,\pm 1)$ and, in the large $p$ limit, on $\mathbb{CP}^{r-1}$, respectively for $r=2$ and $r=3$. We show how the reductions along the two inequivalent fibers give rise to two distinct theories on the base. Reducing along $v$ gives an equivariant version of Donaldson-Witten theory while the other choice leads to a supersymmetric theory closely related to Pestun's theory on $S^4$. We use our technique to reproduce known results for $r=2$ and we provide new results for $r=3$. In particular we show how, at large $p$, the sum over fluxes on $\mathbb{CP}^2$ arises from a sum over flat connections on $L^{5}(p,\pm 1)$. Finally, for $r=3$, we also comment on the factorization of perturbative partition functions on non simply connected manifolds.