Holography of BPS surface operators

TL;DR

This paper explores the holographic duals of BPS surface operators in N=4 Super Yang-Mills theory, demonstrating detailed gravity duals and matching correlation functions, advancing understanding of gauge/gravity correspondence.

Contribution

It provides explicit gravity duals for a class of BPS surface operators and compares supersymmetry, VEVs, and correlation functions from both gauge and gravity perspectives.

Findings

Gravity dual of 1/4 BPS surface operator is a D3-brane on a holomorphic submanifold.

Supersymmetry and VEVs match between gauge theory and gravity calculations.

Correlation functions with chiral primary operators show good agreement.

Abstract

We study a class of dilatation invariant BPS surface operators in 4-dimensional N=4 Super Yang-Mills theory and their holographic duals in type IIB string theory in AdS_5 x S^5. First we take an example of 1/4 BPS surface operator and study it in detail from the holographic point of view. The gravity dual of this surface operator is a D3-brane characterized by a holomorphic submanifold. The supersymmetry and vacuum expectation value are checked in both the gauge theory side and the gravity side. We also calculate the correlation functions with the chiral primary operators in both sides and find good agreement. Next we consider more general dilatation invariant BPS surface operators. The gravity duals of those operators are proposed.