Gauge/Gravity Duality

Big picture slides

Key computations - board

TODAY
Introduction
Strings & Branes Prof Nick Evans
AdS/CFT Correspondence

QCD-like dynamics lecture 2 & 3

Resources
D-branes Clifford Johnson

The classic review of the AdS/CFT Correspondence is

Large N field theories, string theory and gravity.
Ofer Aharony, Steven S. Gubser, Juan Maldacena, Hirosi Ooguri, Yaron Oz.
Phys.Rept.323:183-386,2000, hep-th/9905111

A review of holographic quark and meson physics is

Mesons in Gauge/Gravity Duals - A Review.
Johanna Erdmenger, Nick Evans, Ingo Kirsch, Ed Threlfall Eur.Phys.J.A35:81-
133,2008, arXiv:0711.4467 [hep-th]

Transport properties of gluon plasma

Viscosity, Black Holes, and Quantum Field Theory.
Dam T. Son, Andrei O. Starinets. Ann.Rev.Nucl.Part.Sci.57:95-118,2007.
arXiv:0704.0240 [hep-th]

These slides can be found at

www.hep.phys.soton.ac.uk/~evans/GaugeGravity/
0 Introduction
String theory was originally an attempt to describe mesons
QCD took over
String Theory became a quantum theory of gravity a TOE

The AdS/CFT Correspondence has re-united them

& there are now positive links back to QCD Smolin
* new pictures of confinement & Woit
are
* new understanding of mass generation wrong!
* new ideas on hadronization
* novel descriptions of heavy ion physics
Quarks come in 3
colours
8 gluons mediate the
force
Hadronization in even electron positron collisions is very
messy and uncomputable from first principles as for
heavy ion collisions.
Chiral Lagrangian description of pions
Stringy Hints Regge Trajectories
String theory
was originally
proposed to
explain
Stringy Hints tHooft says Large N

N2c At large N perturbation

theory simplifies and
restricts to planar
Nc Nf diagrams
Dense gluons -> a string
world sheet?
Quark production &
hence string breaking is
The expansion parameter is forbidden at large N
Waves with no energy flux off
the end of a string
 A consistent theory of photons and gravitons? The TOE era!

Actually a negative world-sheet Cosmological Constant leaves the

un-wavy string as a tachyon.
Super-Strings
To make a consistent theory add fermion partners to the X
living on the string world-sheet

Only anomaly free in 10d Extra world sheet waves

Same chirality
fermions or
opposite?

The dilaton vev turns out to be the string coupling constant

The links to QCD seem utterly lost until

HOW SHOULD YOU THINK ABOUT THIS?

Imagine taking a field theory and mixing up the equations for
motion in x and RG flow in energy scale into a 5d theory if
the gauge theory is strongly coupled we dont know these mixed
equations they turn out to be the EoM of strings in AdS!
Another view

Curved extra dimensions generate a Kaluza Klein tower

Here the glueballs of the gauge theory are this tower (at large N
an infinite number are stable).. The spectrum matches the KK
tower of an AdS radial direction
1/2 The World of Branes
T- Duality in String Theory

Closed strings on a compact space generate two sets

of integer spaced mass states

There is a symmetry between spectra

on two different radii.
D-branes
Only closed strings see the new direction not open strings

Electromagnetic Dirichlet
particles live on a boundary
sub-space or conditions
brane

Gravitons live in a higher The extra scalar measures the position

dimension bulk of a dynamical brane in the bulk.

Including multiple D-branes in the space provides flavour indices for

the string ends points. U(1) -> U(N) gauge symmetries
Dirac-Born-Infeld Low Energy
Effective Action

Determined by space-time symmetries.

cf a point particle (0-brane)

cf a 1-brane (string)

+
Brane Induced Metrics
1 AdS/CFT Correspondence

All fields in
adjoint
representation

this N=4
theory has no
running coupling
its conformal!!

The space-time
symmetries are
boosted to SO(2,4)
Scalar Moduli Space
SO(6) global symmetry on 6 scalars fermions transform as 4
of SO(6) due to

Potential:

Provided we pick the same generator the 6 scalar vevs can be any
value physically inequivalent vacua

N
Generically U(N) -> U(1)

As we decouple string modes we must leave finite values for

vevs.
Remember the scalar vevs describe the position of the D3s in the
bulk geometry.

5
AdS5 x S
Symmetries of the Geometry

The five sphere The AdS space has an

isometries are SO(6) SO(2,4) isometry group

& same moduli space

Duality?
Note with -> 0 Newtons constant has gone to zero in the
gauge theory and the GR theory is completely disconnected

Gravity approximate strings only at large g s N

Gravity is only weakly coupled for small g s

Were at large tHooft coupling in gauge theory

Maldacena are these two copies of the

same physics?
Extra 5th dimension?

Different u is looking at
gauge theory at different
RG scale..
. red shift in the black
hole geometry
 Kim, Romans, van
Nieuwenhuizen 1985
Had computed the sugra
spectrum on AdS5xS5
All sugra states match
duality conjecture (but
do not give full operator
spectrum string states
important too!)

The latter is the dilaton - also dual to the gauge coupling gs = g 2

YM
Glueballs
The N=4 theory is conformal and so doesnt have bound states

A simple cure is to compactify the 3d space in which the N=4

theory lives to introduce a scale and break conformal invariance..
Lets just do the case where the 3+1d space becomes a 3-torus with
all radii equal.

We can now investigate the glueball spectrum