New vacua of gauged N=8 supergravity in five dimensions

We analyze a particular SU(2) invariant sector of the scalar manifold of gauged N = 8 supergravity in five dimensions, and find all the critical points of the potential within this sector. The critical points give rise to Anti-de Sitter vacua, and preserve at least an SU(2) gauge symmetry. Consistent truncation implies that these solutions correspond to Anti-de Sitter compactifications of IIB supergravity, and hence to possible near-horizon geometries of 3-branes. Thus we find new conformal phases of softly broken N = 4 Yang-Mills theory. One of the critical points preserves N = 2 supersymmetry in the bulk and is therefore completely stable, and corresponds to an N = 1 superconformal fixed point of the Yang-Mills theory. The corresponding renormalization group flow from the N = 4 point has c(IR)/c(UV) = 27/32. We also discuss the ten-dimensional geometries corresponding to these critical points. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.