A Stringy Origin of M2 Brane Chern-Simons Theories

Understand

We show that string duality relates M-theory on a local Calabi-Yau fourfold singularity X4 to type IIA string theory on a Calabi-Yau threefold X3 fibered over a real line, with RR 2-form fluxes turned on.

• The RR flux encodes how the M-theory circle is fibered over the IIA geometry.
• The theories on N D2 branes probing X3 are the well-known quiver theories with N=2 supersymmetry in three dimensions.
• We show that turning on fluxes, and fibering the X3 over a direction transverse to the branes, corresponds to turning on N=2 Chern-Simons couplings.