Skyrme–Faddeev model from 5d super-Yang–Mills

Abstract

We consider 5d Yang–Mills–Higgs theory with a compact ADE-type gauge group G and one adjoint scalar field on R3,1×R+, where R+=[0,∞) is the half-line. The maximally supersymmetric extension of this model, with five adjoint scalars, appears after a reduction of 6d N=(2,0) superconformal field theory on R3,1×R+×S1 along the circle S1. We show that in the low-energy limit, when momenta along R3,1 are much smaller than along R+, the 5d Yang–Mills–Higgs theory reduces to a nonlinear sigma model on R3,1 with a coset G/H as its target space. Here H is a closed subgroup of G determined by the Higgs-field asymptotics at infinity. The 4d sigma model describes an infinite tower of interacting fields, and in the infrared it is dominated by the standard two-derivative kinetic term and the four-derivative Skyrme–Faddeev term.