From 5d Flat Connections to 4d Fluxes (the Art of Slicing the Cone)

Abstract

We compute the Coulomb branch partition function of the 4d $\mathcal{N}=2$ vector multiplet on closed simply-connected quasi-toric manifolds $B$. This includes a large class of theories, localising to either instantons or anti-instantons at the torus fixed points (including Donaldson-Witten and Pestun-like theories as examples). The main difficulty is to obtain flux contributions from the localisation procedure. We achieve this by taking a detour via the 5d $\mathcal{N}=1$ vector multiplet on closed simply-connected toric Sasaki-manifolds $M$ which are principal $S^1$-bundles over $B$. The perturbative partition function can be expressed as a product over slices of the toric cone. By taking finite quotients $M/\mathbb{Z}_h$ along the $S^1$, the locus picks up non-trivial flat connections which, in the limit $h\to\infty$, provide the sought-after fluxes on $B$. We compute the one-loop partition functions around each topological sector on $M/\mathbb{Z}_h$ and $B$ explicitly, and then factorise them into contributions from the torus fixed points. This enables us to also write down the conjectured instanton part of the partition function on $B$.