Higher-dimensional conformal field theories in the Coulomb branch

We use the AdS/CFT correspondence to study flows of N = 4 SYM to non-conformal theories. The dual geometries can be seen as sourced by a Wigner's semicircle distribution of D3 branes. We consider two cases, the first case corresponds to a point in the Coulomb branch and the theory flows to a six-dimensional conformal field theory. In the second case a mass is introduced for a hypermultiplet and the theory flows to a five-dimensional conformal field theory. We argue from the gravity and the field theory side that the low energy theories correspond to the (2, 0) theory in six dimensions and to a theory with exceptional global symmetry E-1 in five dimensions. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.