D5-brane boundary reflection factors

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the boundary reflection factors for open strings attached to D5-branes in AdS5 x S5, proposing solutions consistent with strong coupling limits and dual field theory interpretations.

Contribution

It introduces a method to compute boundary reflection factors at strong coupling and proposes solutions valid for all couplings, verified through string theory checks.

Findings

Boundary reflection factors computed at strong coupling.

Proposed solutions satisfy crossing equations and match string theory results.

Connections established between D5-branes and dual field theory operators.

Abstract

We compute the strong coupling limit of the boundary reflection factor for excitations on open strings attached to various kinds of D5-branes that probe AdS5 x S5. We study the crossing equation, which constrains the boundary reflection factor, and propose that some solutions will give the boundary reflection factors for all values of the coupling. Our proposal passes various checks in the strong coupling limit by comparison with diverse explicit string theory computations. In some of the cases we consider, the D5-branes correspond to 1/2 BPS Wilson loops in the k-th rank antisymmetric representation of the dual field theory. In the other cases they correspond in the dual field theory to the addition of a fundamental hypermultiplet in a defect.