Yang-Mills Instantons in the Large-N Limit and the AdS/CFT Correspondence

TL;DR

This paper calculates the exact N-dependence of a 16-fermion correlator in N=4 supersymmetric SU(N) gauge theory at the 1-instanton level and finds agreement with AdS/CFT predictions in the large-N limit, supporting the correspondence.

Contribution

It extends previous SU(2) results to SU(N), providing exact N-dependence calculations and confirming the AdS/CFT correspondence at the 1-instanton level.

Findings

Exact N-dependence matches superstring predictions

Supports non-renormalization of the 1-instanton amplitude

Confirms large-N limit agreement with AdS/CFT

Abstract

We examine a certain 16-fermion correlator in {\cal N}=4 supersymmetric SU(N) gauge theory in 4 dimensions. Generalizing recent SU(2) results of Bianchi, Green, Kovacs and Rossi, we calculate the exact N-dependence of the effective 16-fermion vertex at the 1-instanton level, and find precise agreement in the large-N limit with the prediction of the type IIB superstring on AdS_5 x S^5. This suggests that the string theory prediction for the 1-instanton amplitude considered here is not corrected by higher-order terms in the alpha' expansion.