New N=1 dualities from orientifold transitions - Part II: String Theory

Understand

We present a string theoretical description, given in terms of branes and orientifolds wrapping vanishing cycles, of the dual pairs of gauge theories analyzed in 1210.7799.

• Based on the resulting construction we argue that the duality that we observe in field theory is inherited from S-duality of type IIB string theory.
• We analyze in detail the complex cone over the zeroth del Pezzo surface and discuss an infinite family of orbifolds of flat space.
• For the del Pezzo case we describe the system in terms of large volume objects, and show that in this language the duality can be understood from the strongly coupled behavior of the O7^+ plane, which we analyze using simple F-theory considerations.