Conifold Holography

TL;DR

This paper explores extending the Klebanov-Witten gauge/gravity duality beyond the conformal limit to a full Ricci-flat background, analyzing the effective brane theory and correlators in an intermediate-energy regime.

Contribution

It characterizes the effective D3-brane worldvolume action as an IR deformation of the Klebanov-Witten theory and computes two-point functions of dilaton operators on the conifold background.

Findings

Effective IR deformation identified as a dimension-eight operator.

Two-point functions of dilaton dual operators computed and validated.

Extension of the duality beyond the conformal limit demonstrated.

Abstract

We examine the extension of the Klebanov-Witten gauge/gravity correspondence away from the low-energy conformal limit, to a duality involving the full, asymptotically Ricci-flat background describing three-branes on the conifold. After a discussion of the nature of this duality at the string theory level (prior to taking any limits), we concentrate on the intermediate-energy regime where excited string modes are negligible but the branes are still coupled to the bulk. Building upon previous work, we are able to characterize the effective D3-brane worldvolume action in this regime as an IR deformation of the Klebanov-Witten N=1 superconformal gauge theory by a specific dimension-eight operator. In addition, we compute the two-point functions of the operators dual to all partial waves of the dilaton on the conifold-three-brane background, and subject them to various checks.