Rigid surface operators and S-duality: some proposals

We study surface operators in the N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories with gauge groups SO(n) and Sp(2n). As recently shown by Gukov and Witten these theories have a class of rigid surface operators which are expected to be related by S-duality. The rigid surface operators are of two types, unipotent and semisimple. We make explicit proposals for how the S-duality map should act on unipotent surface operators. We also discuss semisimple surface operators and make some proposals for certain subclasses of such operators.Comment: 27 pages. v2: minor changes, added referenc

Wave-growth associated with turbulent spot in plane Poiseuille flow

A kinematic wave theory is used to investigate the cause of the rapid growth of waves observed at the wingtip of turbulent spot in plane Poiseuille flow. It is found that the qualitative behavior of the wave motions is well described by Landahl's breakdown criterion as the wave selection procedure. The predicted wave number, wave angle, and phase velocity are in agreement with those values obtained in a direct simulation

Conformal symmetry of brane world effective actions

A simple derivation of the low-energy effective action for brane worlds is given, highlighting the role of conformal invariance. We show how to improve the effective action for a positive- and negative-tension brane pair using the AdS/CFT correspondence.Comment: 5 pages, published versio

Sensitivity analysis of hydrodynamic stability operators

The eigenvalue sensitivity for hydrodynamic stability operators is investigated. Classical matrix perturbation techniques as well as the concept of epsilon-pseudoeigenvalues are applied to show that parts of the spectrum are highly sensitive to small perturbations. Applications are drawn from incompressible plane Couette, trailing line vortex flow and compressible Blasius boundary layer flow. Parametric studies indicate a monotonically increasing effect of the Reynolds number on the sensitivity. The phenomenon of eigenvalue sensitivity is due to the non-normality of the operators and their discrete matrix analogs and may be associated with large transient growth of the corresponding initial value problem

Large scale flow around turbulent spots

Numerical simulations of a model of plane Couette flow focusing on its in-plane spatio-temporal properties are used to study the dynamics of turbulent spots.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figure

The Dirichlet Obstruction in AdS/CFT

The obstruction for a perturbative reconstruction of the five-dimensional bulk metric starting from the four-dimensional metric at the boundary,that is, the Dirichlet problem, is computed in dimensions $6\leq d\leq 10$ and some comments are made on its general structure and, in particular, on its relationship with the conformal anomaly, which we compute in dimension $d=8$.Comment: 13 pages, references added (this paper supersedes hep-th/0206140, "A Note on the Bach Tensor in AdS/CFT", which has been withdrawn

BPS partition functions in N = 4 Yang-Mills theory on T^4

We consider N = 4 Yang-Mills theory on a flat four-torus with the R-symmetry current coupled to a flat background connection. The partition function depends on the coupling constant of the theory, but when it is expanded in a power series in the R-symmetry connection around the loci at which one of the supersymmetries is unbroken, the constant and linear terms are in fact independent of the coupling constant and can be computed at weak coupling for all non-trivial 't Hooft fluxes. The case of a trivial 't Hooft flux is difficult because of infrared problems, but the corresponding terms in the partition function are uniquely determined by S-duality.Comment: 23 pages, v2 Minor correction

Deformations of WZW models

Current-current deformations for WZW models of semisimple compact groups are discussed in a sigma model approach. We start with the abelian rank one group U(1). Afterwards, we keep the rank one but allow for non abelian structures by considering SU(2). Finally, we present the general case of rank larger than one.Comment: 8 pages, contribution to the proceedings of the 36th International Symposium Ahrenshoop, Berlin, August 26-30, 2003, and of the RTN Workshop in Copenhagen, September 15-20, 2003, references adde

The No-ghost Theorem for AdS_3 and the Stringy Exclusion Principle

A complete proof of the No-ghost Theorem for bosonic and fermionic string theories on AdS_3, or the group manifold of SU(1,1), is given. It is then shown that the restriction on the spin (in terms of the level) that is necessary to obtain a ghost-free spectrum corresponds to the stringy exclusion principle of Maldacena and Strominger.Comment: 20 pages, LaTeX; references adde

Defect CFTs and holographic multiverse

We investigate some aspects of a recent proposal for a holographic description of the multiverse. Specifically, we focus on the implications on the suggested duality of the fluctuations of a bubble separating two universes with different cosmological constants. We do so by considering a similar problem in a 2+1 CFT with a codimension one defect, obtained by an M5-brane probe embedding in AdS_4x S^7, and studying its spectrum of fluctuations. Our results suggest that the kind of behavior required by the spectrum of bubble fluctuations is not likely to take place in defect CFTs with an AdS dual, although it might be possible if the defect supports a non-unitary theory.Comment: 19 pages; v2: typos fixed, minor changes