Wilson loops stability in the gauge/string correspondence

We study the stability of some classical string worldsheet solutions employed for computing the potential energy between two static fundamental quarks in confining and non-confining gravity duals. We discuss the fixing of the diffeomorphism invariance of the string action, its relation with the fluctuation orientation and the interpretation of the quark mass substraction worldsheet needed for computing the potential energy in smooth (confining) gravity background. We consider various dual gravity backgrounds and show by a numerical analysis the existence of instabilities under linear fluctuations for classical string embedding solutions having positive length function derivative $L'(r_0)>0$. Finally we make a brief discussion of 't Hooft loops in non-conformal backgrounds.Comment: 34 pages, 36 figures. Reference added. Final version JHEP accepte

Wilson loops stability in the gauge/string correspondence

We study the stability of some classical string worldsheet solutions employed for computing the potential energy between two static fundamental quarks in confining and non-confining gravity duals. We discuss the fixing of the diffeomorphism invariance of the string action, its relation with the fluctuation orientation and the interpretation of the quark mass substraction worldsheet needed for computing the potential energy in smooth (confining) gravity background. We consider various dual gravity backgrounds and show by a numerical analysis the existence of instabilities under linear fluctuations for classical string embedding solutions having positive length function derivative L'(r₀) > 0. Finally we make a brief discussion of 't Hooft loops in non-conformal backgrounds.Facultad de Ciencias ExactasInstituto de Física La Plat

Holography in Superspace

The AdS/CFT correspondence identifies the coordinates of the conformal boundary of anti-de Sitter space with the coordinates of the conformal field theory. We generalize this identification to theories formulated in superspace. As an application of our results, we study a class of Wilson loops in N=4 SYM theory. A gauge theory computation shows that the expectation values of these loops are invariant under a local kappa-symmetry, except at intersections. We identify this with the kappa-invariance of the associated string worldsheets in the corresponding bulk superspace.Comment: 36 pages, LaTeX, references adde

The decay of unstable k-strings in SU(N) gauge theories at zero and finite temperature

Sources in higher representations of SU(N) gauge theory at T=0 couple with apparently stable strings with tensions depending on the specific representation rather than on its N-ality. Similarly at the deconfining temperature these sources carry their own representation-dependent critical exponents. It is pointed out that in some instances one can evaluate exactly these exponents by fully exploiting the correspondence between the 2+1 dimensional critical gauge theory and the 2d conformal field theory in the same universality class. The emerging functional form of the Polyakov-line correlators suggests a similar form for Wilson loops in higher representations which helps in understanding the behaviour of unstable strings at T=0. A generalised Wilson loop in which along part of its trajectory a source is converted in a gauge invariant way into higher representations with same N-ality could be used as a tool to estimate the decay scale of the unstable strings.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figures v2: typos correcte

Operator with large spin and spinning D3-brane

We consider the conformal dimension of an operator with large spin, using a spinning D3-brane with electric flux in AdS_5 x S^5 instead of spinning fundamental string. This spinning D3-brane solution seems to correspond to an operator made by taking trace in a large symmetric representation. The conformal dimension, the spin and the R-charge show a scaling relation in a certain region of parameters. In the small string charge limit, the result is consistent with the fundamental string picture. There is a phase transition when the fundamental string charge become larger than a certain critical value; there is no stable D3-brane solution above the critical value.Comment: 16 pages, 4 figures. v2: typos corrected, references added, series expansion of anomalous dimension added. v3: a reference added, comment on calculation in gauge theor

Holography and the Higgs branch of N=2 SYM theories

We present a proposal for the description of the Higgs branch of four-dimensional N=2 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories in the context of the AdS/CFT correspondence. We focus on a finite Sp(N) N=2 theory arising as dual of a configuration of N D3-branes in the vicinity of four D7-branes and an orientifold 7-plane in type I' string theory. The field theory contains hypermultiplets in the second rank anti-symmetric and in the fundamental representations. The Higgs branch has a dual description in terms of gauge field configurations with non-zero instanton number on the world-volume of the D7-branes. In this setting the non-renormalisation of the metric on the Higgs branch implies constraints on the alpha' corrections to the D7-brane effective action, including couplings to the curvature and five-form field strength. In the second part of the paper we discuss non-renormalisation properties of BPS Wilson lines, which are closely related to the physics of the Higgs branch. Using a formulation of the four-dimensional N=2 theory in terms of a three-dimensional N=2 superspace we show that the expectation value of certain Wilson-line operators with hypermultiplets at the end points is independent of the length and thus coincides with the expectation value of the local operators parametrising the Higgs branch.Comment: LaTeX, 29 pages, 1 figure; v2: minor corrections, one reference adde

The Renormalization Group Approach to the Confining String

The renormalization group approach towards the string representation of non abelian gauge theories translates, in terms of the string sigma model beta function equations, the renormalization group evolution of the gauge coupling constant and Zamolodchikov`s $c$ function. Tachyon stability, glueball mass gap, renormalization group evolution of the $c$ function and the area law for the Wilson loop are studied for a critical bosonic string vacuum corresponding to a non abelian gauge theory in four dimensional space-time. We prove that the same intrinsic geometry for the string vacuum is universal in some sense, reproducing the Yang-Mills beta function to arbitrary loop order in perturbation theory.Comment: LaTeX, 26 pages. Minor change

Confinement in Gauge Theories from the Condensation of World-Sheet Defects in Liouville String

We present a Liouville-string approach to confinement in four-dimensional gauge theories, which extends previous approaches to include non-conformal theories. We consider Liouville field theory on world sheets whose boundaries are the Wilson loops of gauge theory, which exhibit vortex and spike defects. We show that world-sheet vortex condensation occurs when the Wilson loop is embedded in four target space-time dimensions, and show that this corresponds to the condensation of gauge magnetic monopoles in target space. We also show that vortex condensation generates a effective string tension corresponding to the confinement of electric degrees of freedom. The tension is independent of the string length in a gauge theory whose electric coupling varies logarithmically with the length scale. The Liouville field is naturally interpreted as an extra target dimension, with an anti-de-Sitter (AdS) structure induced by recoil effects on the gauge monopoles, interpreted as D branes of the effective string theory. Black holes in the bulk AdS space correspond to world-sheet defects, so that phases of the bulk gravitational system correspond to the different world-sheet phases, and hence to different phases of the four-dimensional gauge theory. Deconfinement is associated with a Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition of vortices on the Wilson-loop world sheet, corresponding in turn to a phase transition of the black holes in the bulk AdS space.Comment: 29 pages LATEX, three eps figures incorporate