Relating Conifold Geometries to NS5-branes

Understand

We construct the first known example of a near horizon supergravity solution for a pair of NS5-branes, intersecting on R^{1,3} and localised in all directions except a single transverse circle.

• We do this by establishing an explicit map between the conifold metric and the near horizon geometry of two intersecting NS5-branes, clarifying and correcting a number of open issues in the literature en route.
• Our technique is general in nature and may be applied to a whole class of 1/4-BPS five-brane webs and their geometric duals.
• These 1/4-BPS solutions may have an interesting holographic interpretation in terms of little string theory.