Deconstruction of the Maldacena-Nunez compactification

We demonstrate a classical equivalence between the large-N limit of the higgsed N = 1*SUSY U(N) Yang-Mills theory and the Maldacena-Nunez twisted compactification of a six-dimensional gauge theory on a two-sphere. A direct comparison of the actions and spectra of the two theories reveals them to be identical. We also propose a gauge theory limit which should describe the corresponding spherical compactification of little string theory. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.