Orientifold in Conifold and Quantum Deformation

Changhyun Ahn, Soonkeon Nam, Sang-Jin Sin

Published 2001-06-12, updated 2001-08-16Version 5

We describe orientifold operation defining O3 plane in the conifold background by deriving it from that of O4 plane in the Type IIA brane construction by T-duality. We find that both $O3^+$ and $O3^-$ are at the tip of the cone so that there is no net untwisted RR charge. RG analysis shows that we need two `fractional' branes for the conformal invariance in orientifolded conifold. We argue that the gravity solution is the same as Klebanov and Tsyetlin since SUGRA cannot distinguish the orientifolds and D branes in this case. We describe the duality cascade as well as the quantum deformation of the moduli space of the field theory in the presence of the orientifold. The finitely resolved conifold does not allow the orientifold, while deformed conifold leaves us an unresolved issue on supersymmetry.