Gauge fields as composite boundary excitations

TL;DR

This paper explores the relationship between massless gauge excitations in anti-de Sitter space and boundary conformal field theory, revealing their boundary-boundary correspondence and topological nature.

Contribution

It uncovers the boundary representation of gauge fields as boundary currents and their interior topological counterparts, advancing the understanding of AdS/CFT correspondence.

Findings

Massless gauge excitations are boundary gauge currents.

Boundary excitations are topological singletons.

Gravity and gauge symmetries correspond to boundary symmetries.

Abstract

We investigate representations of the conformal group that describe "massless" particles in the interior and at the boundary of anti-de Sitter space. It turns out that massless gauge excitations in anti-de Sitter are gauge "current" operators at the boundary. Conversely, massless excitations at the boundary are topological singletons in the interior. These representations lie at the threshold of two "unitary bounds" that apply to any conformally invariant field theory. Gravity and Yang-Mills gauge symmetry in anti-De Sitter is translated to global translational symmetry and continuous $R$-symmetry of the boundary superconformal field theory.