Glueball Mass Spectrum From Supergravity

TL;DR

This paper computes glueball mass spectra in non-supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories using supergravity duals, finding good agreement with lattice data and analyzing stringy corrections to the masses.

Contribution

It provides a novel supergravity-based method to calculate glueball spectra and includes leading stringy corrections, extending previous holographic approaches.

Findings

Glueball mass ratios match lattice data well.

Stringy corrections decrease glueball masses.

Masses decrease with decreasing 't Hooft coupling.

Abstract

We calculate the spectrum of glueball masses in non-supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory in three and four dimensions, based on a conjectured duality between supergravity and large N gauge theories. The glueball masses are obtained by solving supergravity wave equations in a black hole geometry. We find that the mass ratios are in good numerical agreement with the available lattice data. We also compute the leading (g_{YM}^2 N)^{-1} corrections to the glueball masses, by taking into account stringy corrections to the supergravity action and to the black hole metric. We find that the corrections to the masses are negative and of order (g_{YM}^2N)^{-3/2}. Thus for a fixed ultraviolet cutoff the masses decrease as we decrease the 't Hooft coupling, in accordance with our expectation about the continuum limit of the gauge theories.