Exploring the spectrum of planar $AdS_4/CFT_3$ at finite coupling

TL;DR

This paper numerically solves the Quantum Spectral Curve equations for planar $ ext{AdS}_4/ ext{CFT}_3$ at finite coupling, providing new weak and strong coupling results, testing the formalism, and supporting the duality with type IIA superstring theory.

Contribution

It introduces a numerical approach to solve QSC equations at finite coupling for $ ext{AdS}_4/ ext{CFT}_3$, including new perturbative results and strong coupling insights.

Findings

Numerical solutions interpolate between weak and strong coupling regimes.

New perturbative conformal dimensions outside the $ ext{sl}(2)$ sector.

Strong coupling results derived from numerical data.

Abstract

The Quantum Spectral Curve (QSC) equations for planar $\mathcal{N}=6$ super-conformal Chern-Simons (SCS) are solved numerically at finite values of the coupling constant for states in the $\mathfrak{sl}(2|1)$ sector. New weak coupling results for conformal dimensions of operators outside the $\mathfrak{sl}(2)$-like sector are obtained by adapting a recently proposed algorithm for the QSC perturbative solution. Besides being interesting in their own right, these perturbative results are necessary initial inputs for the numerical algorithm to converge on the correct solution. The non-perturbative numerical outcomes nicely interpolate between the weak coupling and the known semiclassical expansions, and novel strong coupling exact results are deduced from the numerics. Finally, the existence of contour crossing singularities in the TBA equations for the operator $\textbf{20}$ is ruled out by our analysis. The results of this paper are an important test of the QSC formalism for this model, open the way to new quantitative studies and provide further evidence in favour of the conjectured weak/strong coupling duality between $\mathcal{N}=6$ SCS and type IIA superstring theory on $AdS_4 \times CP^3$. Attached to the arXiv submission, a Mathematica implementation of the numerical method and ancillary files containing the numerical results are provided.