Holographic flavor in N=4 gauge theories in 3d from wrapped branes

TL;DR

This paper explores the holographic duals of 3D N=4 gauge theories with added flavor via wrapped D4-branes, analyzing backreaction, meson spectra, Wilson loops, and other physical properties.

Contribution

It introduces a new holographic model for 3D N=4 gauge theories with flavor, including backreacted geometries and detailed physical property analyses.

Findings

Backreacted metric reproduces gauge coupling running

Meson spectrum and Wilson loop behaviors are characterized

Holographic Higgs branch and entanglement entropy are analyzed

Abstract

We study the addition of flavor to the gravity dual of N=4 three-dimensional gauge theories obtained by wrapping $N_c$ D4-branes on a two-cycle of a non-compact Calabi-Yau two-fold. In this setup the flavor is introduced by adding another set of D4-branes that are extended along the non-compact directions of the Calabi-Yau which are normal to the cycle which the color branes wrap. The analysis is performed both in the quenched and unquenched approximations. In this latter case we compute the backreacted metric and we show that it reproduces the running of the gauge coupling. The meson spectrum and the behavior of Wilson loops are also discussed and the holographic realization of the Higgs branch is analyzed. Other aspects of this system studied are the entanglement entropy and the non-relativistic version of our backgrounds.