Welcome to the new version of CaltechAUTHORS. Login is currently restricted to library staff. If you notice any issues, please email coda@library.caltech.edu
Published July 15, 2001 | Published + Submitted
Journal Article Open

Holography and Defect Conformal Field Theories

Abstract

We develop both the gravity and field theory sides of the Karch-Randall conjecture that the near-horizon description of a certain D5-D3 brane configuration in string theory, realized as AdS_5 x S^5 bisected by an AdS_4 x S^2 "brane", is dual to N=4 Super Yang-Mills theory in R^4 coupled to an R^3 defect. We propose a complete Lagrangian for the field theory dual, a novel "defect superconformal field theory" wherein a subset of the fields of N=4 SYM interacts with a d=3 SU(N) fundamental hypermultiplet on the defect preserving conformal invariance and 8 supercharges. The Kaluza-Klein reduction of wrapped D5 modes on AdS_4 x S^2 leads to towers of short representations of OSp(4|4), and we construct the map to a set of dual gauge-invariant defect operators O_3 possessing integer conformal dimensions. Gravity calculations of and are given. Spacetime and N-dependence matches expectations from dCFT, while the behavior as functions of λ = g^2 N at strong and weak coupling is generically different. We comment on a class of correlators for which a non-renormalization theorem may still exist. Partial evidence for the conformality of the quantum theory is given, including a complete argument for the special case of a U(1) gauge group. Some weak coupling arguments which illuminate the duality are presented.

Additional Information

© 2002 American Physical Society. (Received 21 January 2002; published 10 July 2002) We are grateful for conversations with Allan Adams, Costas Bachas, Alex Buchel, Jan de Boer, Robbert Dijkgraaf, Noah Graham, Ami Hanany, Petr Hořava, Andreas Karch, Igor Klebanov, Andrei Mikhailov, Joe Polchinski, Kostas Skenderis, Witek Skiba, Jan Troost, and Wati Taylor. We also thank Sergey Frolov and Massimo Porrati for pointing out minor errors in the first version. The work of O.D. was supported by the NSF under grant PHY-99-07949. The work of D.Z.F. was supported by the NSF under grant PHY-00-96515. The work of H.O. was supported in part by DOE Grant DE-AC03-76SF000098. D.Z.F. and H.O. would also like to thank ITP, Santa Barbara for hospitality.

Attached Files

Published - PhysRevD.66.025009.pdf

Submitted - 0111135.pdf

Files

0111135.pdf
Files (811.5 kB)
Name Size Download all
md5:75d7190cbd78925c7a3785393e1cf6f0
505.9 kB Preview Download
md5:7074f404f8493c5adc94a405e49cde6b
305.6 kB Preview Download

Additional details

Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
October 24, 2023