M5-branes from gauge theories on the 5-sphere

We use the 5-sphere partition functions of supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories to explore the (2, 0) superconformal theory on S-5 x S-1. The 5d theories can be regarded as Scherk-Schwarz reductions of the 6d theory along the circle. In a special limit, the perturbative partition function takes the form of the Chern-Simons partition function on S-3. With a, simple non-perturbative completion, it becomes a 6d index which captures the degeneracy of a sector of BPS states as well as the index version of the vacuum Casimir energy. The Casimir energy exhibits the N-3 scaling at large N. The large N index for U(N) gauge group also completely agrees with the supergravity index on AdS(7) x S-4.