Non-renormalisation of extremal correlators in N=4 SYM theory

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that extremal correlators in N=4 SYM theory are not renormalized at leading order, supporting a conjecture from AdS/SCFT correspondence and indicating their protected status.

Contribution

It provides a proof that extremal correlators are unrenormalized at first order and do not receive instanton contributions at leading semiclassical order in N=4 SYM.

Findings

Extremal correlators are not renormalized at first order.

No instanton contributions at leading semiclassical order.

Supports the strongest version of the AdS/SCFT prediction.

Abstract

We show that extremal correlators of chiral primary operators in N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory with SU(N) gauge group are neither renormalised at first order in perturbation theory nor receive contribution from any instanton sector at leading order in the semiclassical expansion. This lends support to the strongest version of a new prediction recently put forward on the basis of the AdS/SCFT correspondence.