Deconfining N = 2 SCFTs or the art of brane bending

A bstract We introduce a systematic approach to constructing N = 1 Lagrangians for a class of interacting N = 2 SCFTs. We analyse in detail the simplest case of the construction, arising from placing branes at an orientifolded ℂ 2 / ℤ 2 singularity. In this way we obtain Lagrangian descriptions for all the R 2 ,k theories. The rank one theories in this class are the E 6 Minahan-Nemeschansky theory and the C 2 × U(1) Argyres-Wittig theory. The Lagrangians that arise from our brane construction manifestly exhibit either the entire expected flavour symmetry group of the SCFT (for even k ) or a full-rank subgroup thereof (for odd k ), so we can compute the full superconformal index of the N = 2 SCFTs, and also systematically identify the Higgsings associated to partial closing of punctures.