Heterotic little string theories and holography

Abstract

It has been conjectured that little string theories in six dimensions are holographic to critical string theory in a linear dilaton background. We test this conjecture for theories arising on the worldvolume of heterotic fivebranes. We compute the spectrum of chiral primaries in these theories and compare with results following from type-I-heterotic duality and the AdS/CFT correspondence. We also construct holographic duals for heterotic fivebranes near orbifold singularities. Finally we find several new little string theories which have Spin(32)/Bbb Z2 or E8 × E8 global symmetry but do not have a simple interpretation either in heterotic or M-theory.