Scattering of Giant Holes

TL;DR

This paper investigates scalar excitations in N=4 super Yang-Mills theory, deriving the all-loop S-matrix for holes in the spin chain and confirming its agreement with semiclassical string theory calculations.

Contribution

It provides the first all-loop computation of the hole S-matrix in the sl(2,R) sector and demonstrates exact agreement with string theory predictions.

Findings

All-loop hole S-matrix derived from Bethe ansatz.

Agreement between gauge theory and string theory results.

Weak and strong coupling expansions match precisely.

Abstract

We study scalar excitations of high spin operators in N=4 super Yang-Mills theory, which are dual to solitons propagating on a long folded string in AdS_3 x S^1. In the spin chain description of the gauge theory, these are associated to holes in the magnon distribution in the sl(2,R) sector. We compute the all-loop hole S-matrix from the asymptotic Bethe ansatz, and expand in leading orders at weak and strong coupling. The worldsheet S-matrix of solitonic excitations on the GKP string is calculated using semiclassical quantization. We find an exact agreement between the gauge theory and string theory results.