c-Extremization from toric geometry

Abstract

We derive a geometric formulation of the 2d central charge cr from infinite families of 4d N=1 superconformal field theories topologically twisted on constant curvature Riemann surfaces. They correspond to toric quiver gauge theories and are associated to D3 branes probing five dimensional Sasaki–Einstein geometries in the AdS/CFT correspondence. We show that cr can be expressed in terms of the areas of the toric diagram describing the moduli space of the 4d theory, both for toric geometries with smooth and singular horizons. We also study the relation between a-maximization in 4d and c-extremization in 2d, giving further evidences of the mixing of the baryonic symmetries with the exact R-current in two dimensions.