Holographic current correlators at finite coupling and scattering off a supersymmetric plasma

TL;DR

This paper investigates how string theory corrections influence current correlators in a supersymmetric plasma, revealing that these corrections mainly affect the metric and lead to enhanced scattering signals at high energies.

Contribution

It introduces the first analysis of order()^3 string corrections on vector current correlators in  supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory at finite temperature.

Findings

Corrections indirectly modify correlators via the metric.

Higher-derivative operators have a suppressed effect.

Enhanced structure functions at high energy regimes.

Abstract

By studying the effect of the order(\alpha'^3) string theory corrections to type IIB supergravity, including those corrections involving the Ramond-Ramond five-form field strength, we obtain the corrected equations of motion of an Abelian perturbation of the AdS_5-Schwarzschild black hole. We then use the gauge theory/string theory duality to examine the coupling-constant dependence of vector current correlators associated to a gauged U(1) sub-group of the global R-symmetry group of strongly-coupled N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory at finite temperature. The corrections induce a set of higher-derivative operators for the U(1) gauge field, but their effect is highly suppressed. We thus find that the order(\alpha'^3) corrections affect the vector correlators only indirectly, through the corrected metric. We apply our results to investigate scattering off a supersymmetric Yang-Mills plasma at low and high energy. In the latter regime, where Deep Inelastic Scattering is expected to occur, we find an enhancement of the plasma structure functions in comparison with the infinite 't Hooft coupling result.