Notes on S-folds and $\mathcal{N}=3$ theories

Abstract: We consider D3 branes in presence of an S-fold plane. The latter is a non perturbative object, arising from the combined projection of an S-duality twist and a discrete orbifold of the R-symmetry group. This construction naively gives rise to 4d $\mathcal{N}=3$ SCFTs. Nevertheless it has been observed that in some cases supersymmetry is enhanced to $\mathcal{N}=4$. In this paper we study the explicit counting of degrees of freedom arising from vector multiplets associated to strings suspended between the D3 branes probing the S-fold. We propose that, for trivial discrete torsion, there is no vector multiplet associated to $(1,0)$ strings stretched between a brane and its image. We then focus on the case of rank 2 $\mathcal{N}=3$ theory that enhances to $SU(3)$ $\mathcal{N}=4$ SYM, explicitly spelling out the isomorphism between the BPS-spectrum of the manifestly $\mathcal{N}=3$ theory and that of three D3 branes in flat spacetime. Subsequently, we consider 3-pronged strings in these setups and show how wall-crossing in the S-fold background implies wall crossing in the flat geometry. This can be considered a consistency check of the \emph{conjectured} SUSY enhancement. We also find that the above isomorphism implies that a $(1,0)$ string, suspended between a brane and its image in the S-fold, corresponds to a 3-string junction in the flat geometry. This is in agreement with our claim on the absence of a vector multiplet associated to such $(1,0)$ strings. This is because the 3-string junction in flat geometry gives rise to a $1/4$-th BPS multiplet of the $\mathcal{N}=4$ algebra. Such multiplets always include particles with spin $>1$ as opposed to a vector multiplet which is restricted by the requirement that the spins must be $\leq 1$.