The trouble with twisting (2,0) theory

Journal article, 2014

We consider a twisted version of the abelian (2,0) theory placed upon a Lorenzian six-manifold with a product structure, M_6=C×M_4. This is done by an investigation of the free tensor multiplet on the level of equations of motion, where the problem of its formulation in Euclidean signature is circumvented by letting the time-like direction lie in the two-manifold C and performing a topological twist along M_4 alone. A compactification on C is shown to be necessary to enable the possibility of finding a topological field theory. The hypothetical twist along a Euclidean C is argued to amount to the correct choice of linear combination of the two supercharges scalar on M_4. It may be slightly surprising that this is not the same linear combination as in the well known Donaldson-Witten twist. A more surprising fact however, is that this twisted theory contains no Q-exact and covariantly conserved stress tensor unless M_4 has vanishing curvature. This is to our knowledge a phenomenon which has not been observed before in topological field theories. In the literature, the setup of the twisting used here has been suggested as the origin of the conjectured AGT-correspondence, and our hope is that this work may somehow contribute to the understanding of it.