Bubbling Defect CFT's

TL;DR

This paper explores the gravitational duals of defect conformal field theories arising from brane configurations in N=4 SYM, revealing how branes transition into fluxes supported on three-spheres in the AdS/CFT framework.

Contribution

It introduces a geometric transition describing the backreaction of five-branes in the gravitational dual of defect CFTs, extending the understanding of brane-flux transformations.

Findings

Five-branes undergo a geometric transition into fluxes on three-spheres.

The defect CFTs are modeled by probe branes in a Karch-Randall setup.

Backreaction modifies the AdS_5xS^5 geometry to include flux-supported cycles.

Abstract

We study the gravitational description of conformal half-BPS domain wall operators in N=4 SYM, which are described by defect CFT's. These defect CFT's arise in the low energy limit of a Hanany-Witten like brane setup and are described in a probe brane approximation by a Karch-Randall brane configuration. The gravitational backreaction takes the five-branes in AdS_5xS^5 through a geometric transition and turns them into appropriate fluxes which are supported on non-trivial three-spheres.