The Weight of $Spin(32)/\mathbb{Z}_2$ Little Strings: T-duality and Hasse Diagrams

Abstract

We study the worldvolume theories of stacks of $Spin(32)/\mathbb{Z}_2$ heterotic NS5-branes probing a transverse singularity $\mathfrak{g}$. We revisit and extend the original classification by Blum and Intriligator, and show that the resulting 6d Little String Theories (LSTs) are naturally labeled by affine dominant coweights of the singularity $\mathfrak{g}$. This in turn enables us to efficiently arrange these theories into groupings satisfying all known necessary conditions to be T-dual. Using this formulation, we then study the partial order of those coweights, and extend a recently proposed slice-subtraction algorithm to construct Hasse diagrams for LSTs directly from their six-dimensional generalized quivers, allowing us to probe certain properties of their Higgs branch. Along the way, we exploit these techniques to show that the number of duality orbits at maximal flavor rank is determined by the center of the transverse singularity $\mathfrak{g}$, and provide a simplified proof of a monotonicity theorem for this class of theories. Finally, we show how some of our techniques can be extended to other classes of 6d theories, such as Type-II LSTs and SCFTs.