Strings for Quantumchromodynamics

TL;DR

This paper introduces gauge/string dualities, especially AdS/CFT, highlighting their implications for understanding strongly coupled gauge theories like QCD and discussing recent progress and applications.

Contribution

It provides a non-technical overview of gauge/string dualities, focusing on AdS/CFT and its relevance to QCD-like models and quark-gluon plasmas.

Findings

Explains emergence of AdS/CFT dualities in string theory

Highlights progress in applying dualities to QCD-like models

Discusses extensions to realistic strongly coupled systems

Abstract

During the last ten years, intriguing dualities between gauge and string theory have been found and explored. They provide a novel window on strongly coupled gauge physics, including QCD-like models. Based on a short historical review of modern string theory, we shall explain how so-called AdS/CFT dualities emerged at the end of the 1990s. Some of their concrete implications and remarkable recent progress are then illustrated for the simplest example, namely the multicolor limit of \N=4 Super Yang-Mills theory in four dimensions. We end with a few comments on existing extensions to more realistic models and applications, in particular to strongly coupled quark gluon plasmas. This text is meant as a non-technical introduction to gauge/string dualities for (particle) physicists.