A Curious Truncation of N=4 Yang-Mills

TL;DR

This paper introduces a truncation method for approximating integrated correlation functions in N=4 Yang-Mills theory, deriving differential equations for coupling dependence, and confirms its accuracy against AdS/CFT calculations.

Contribution

It proposes a novel truncation approach to simplify the analysis of correlation functions in N=4 Yang-Mills theory and demonstrates its effectiveness in matching known amplitude results.

Findings

The truncated OPE approximation matches AdS/CFT results for a specific correlator.

The method yields differential equations governing coupling dependence.

Conjecture that the truncation becomes exact at large N and strong coupling.

Abstract

The coupling constant dependence of correlation functions of BPS operators in N=4 Yang-Mills can be expressed in terms of integrated correlation functions. We approximate these integrated correlators by using a truncated OPE expansion. This leads to differential equations for the coupling dependence. When applied to a particular sixteen point correlator, the coupling dependence we find agrees with the corresponding amplitude computed via the AdS/CFT correspondence. We conjecture that this truncation becomes exact in the large N and large 't Hooft coupling limit.