Holography and Defect Conformal Field Theories

TL;DR

This paper develops a holographic duality between a D5-D3 brane configuration in string theory and a defect conformal field theory, proposing a detailed field theory dual and analyzing its properties through gravity and gauge theory calculations.

Contribution

It introduces a complete Lagrangian for the defect CFT dual to a specific brane setup, including the spectrum of operators and their correlation functions, advancing the understanding of holography with defects.

Findings

Constructed the defect superconformal field theory Lagrangian.

Mapped Kaluza-Klein modes to dual defect operators with conformal dimensions.

Performed gravity calculations matching field theory expectations.

Abstract

We develop both the gravity and field theory sides of the Karch-Randall conjecture that the near-horizon description of a certain D5-D3 brane configuration in string theory, realized as AdS_5 x S^5 bisected by an AdS_4 x S^2 "brane", is dual to N=4 Super Yang-Mills theory in R^4 coupled to an R^3 defect. We propose a complete Lagrangian for the field theory dual, a novel "defect superconformal field theory" wherein a subset of the fields of N=4 SYM interacts with a d=3 SU(N) fundamental hypermultiplet on the defect preserving conformal invariance and 8 supercharges. The Kaluza-Klein reduction of wrapped D5 modes on AdS_4 x S^2 leads to towers of short representations of OSp(4|4), and we construct the map to a set of dual gauge-invariant defect operators O_3 possessing integer conformal dimensions. Gravity calculations of <O_4> and <O_4O_3> are given. Spacetime and N-dependence matches expectations from dCFT, while the behavior as functions of lambda = g^2 N at strong and weak coupling is generically different. We comment on a class of correlators for which a non-renormalization theorem may still exist. Partial evidence for the conformality of the quantum theory is given, including a complete argument for the special case of a U(1) gauge group. Some weak coupling arguments which illuminate the duality are presented.