Spheres, Charges, Instantons, and Bootstrap: A Five-Dimensional Odyssey

Understand

We combine supersymmetric localization and the conformal bootstrap to study five-dimensional superconformal field theories.

• To begin, we classify the admissible counter-terms and derive a general relation between the five-sphere partition function and the conformal and flavor central charges.
• Along the way, we discover a new superconformal anomaly in five dimensions.
• We then propose a precise triple factorization formula for the five-sphere partition function, that incorporates instantons and is consistent with flavor symmetry enhancement.