Gauge dual and noncommutative extension of an N=2 supergravity solution -: art. no. 044009

We investigate some properties of a recent supergravity solution of Pilch and Warner, which is dual to the N = 4 gauge theory softly broken to N = 2. We verify that a D3-brane probe has the expected moduli space and its effective action can be brought to N = 2 form. The kinetic term for the probe vanishes on an enhancon locus, as in earlier work on large-N N = 2 theories, though for the Pilch-Warner solution this locus is a line rather than a ring. On the gauge theory side we find that the probe metric can be obtained from a perturbative one-loop calculation; this principle may be useful in obtaining the supergravity dual at more general points in the N = 2 gauge theory moduli space. We then turn on a B-field, following earlier work on the N = 4 theory, to obtain the supergravity dual to the noncommutative N = 2 theory.