Nonperturbative scales in AdS/CFT

The cusp anomalous dimension is a ubiquitous quantity in four-dimensional gauge theories, ranging from QCD to maximally supersymmetric N=4 Yang-Mills theory, and it is one of the best investigated observables in the AdS/CFT correspondence. In planar N=4 SYM theory, its perturbative expansion at weak coupling has a finite radius of convergence while at strong coupling it admits an expansion in inverse powers of the 't Hooft coupling which is given by a non-Borel summable asymptotic series. We study the cusp anomalous dimension in the transition regime from strong to weak coupling and argue that the transition is driven by nonperturbative, exponentially suppressed corrections. To compute these corrections, we revisit the calculation of the cusp anomalous dimension in planar N=4 SYM theory and extend the previous analysis by taking into account nonperturbative effects. We demonstrate that the scale parameterizing nonperturbative corrections coincides with the mass gap of the two-dimensional bosonic O(6) sigma model embedded into the AdS_5xS^5 string theory. This result is in agreement with the prediction coming from the string theory consideration.Comment: 49 pages, 1 figure; v2: minor corrections, references adde

Quantum folded string and integrability: from finite size effects to Konishi dimension

Using the algebraic curve approach we one-loop quantize the folded string solution for the type IIB superstring in AdS(5)xS(5). We obtain an explicit result valid for arbitrary values of its Lorentz spin S and R-charge J in terms of integrals of elliptic functions. Then we consider the limit S ~ J ~ 1 and derive the leading three coefficients of strong coupling expansion of short operators. Notably, our result evaluated for the anomalous dimension of the Konishi state gives 2\lambda^{1/4}-4+2/\lambda^{1/4}. This reproduces correctly the values predicted numerically in arXiv:0906.4240. Furthermore we compare our result using some new numerical data from the Y-system for another similar state. We also revisited some of the large S computations using our methods. In particular, we derive finite--size corrections to the anomalous dimension of operators with small J in this limit.Comment: 20 pages, 1 figure; v2: references added, typos corrected; v3: major improvement of the references; v4: Discussion of short operators is restricted to the case n=1. This restriction does not affect the main results of the pape