M(ore) on chiral gauge theories from D-branes

Abstract

We consider a brane configuration consisting of intersecting Neveu-Schwarz five-branes, Dirichlet four-branes, and an orientifold four-plane in a C² /Z₃ orbifold background. We show that the low-energy dynamics is described by a four-dimensional gauge theory with N = 1 supersymmetry and S(N + 4) × SU(N) or SP(2M) × SU(2M) × SU(2M + 4) gauge symmetry. The matter content of this theory is chiral. In particular, the SU group has one matter field in the antisymmetric tensor or symmetric tensor representation and several fields in the fundamental and antifundamental representations. We discuss various consistency checks on these theories. By considering the brane configuration in M-theory we deduce the spectral curves for these theories. Finally, we consider the effects of replacing the orbifold background with a non-singular ALE space (both with and without an orientifold plane) and show that it leaves the spectral curves unchanged.