Giant Holes

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the spectrum of excitations around a long spinning string in AdS_3, revealing solitonic excitations with a dispersion relation that connects to dual gauge theory predictions.

Contribution

It identifies and characterizes solitonic excitations in the semiclassical spectrum of a spinning string in AdS_3, linking them to gauge theory holes.

Findings

Discovery of a solitonic branch in the excitation spectrum.

Derivation of the dispersion relation for these solitonic excitations.

Connection between low-energy solitons and elementary string excitations.

Abstract

We study the semiclassical spectrum of excitations around a long spinning string in AdS_3. In addition to the usual small fluctuations, we find the spectrum contains a branch of solitonic excitations of finite energy. We determine the dispersion relation for these excitations. This has a relativistic form at low energies but also matches the dispersion relation for the "hole" of the dual gauge theory spin chain at high energies. The low-energy behaviour is consistent with the hypothesis that the solitonic excitations studied here are continuously related to the elementary excitations of the string.