Non-supersymmetric AdS6 and the swampland

Abstract

We discuss infinite families of non-supersymmetric AdS6 solutions in Type IIB string theory. They are siblings of supersymmetric solutions which are associated with (p, q) 5-brane webs and holographically dual to 5d SCFTs engineered by those brane webs. The non-supersymmetric backgrounds carry identical 5-brane charges and are connected to the supersymmetric ones by RG flows. We study the stability of the non-supersymmetric solutions, identifying perturbative and non-perturbative decay channels for all the backgrounds explicitly available. We also identify likely decay mechanisms for solutions that have not been constructed explicitly but may be expected to exist based on brane web considerations. Finally, we exclude scale separation by constructing universal spin 2 modes with masses comparable to the mass-scale of the cosmological constant.