Complex marginal deformations of D3-brane geometries, their Penrose limits and giant gravitons

We apply the Lunin--Maldacena construction of gravity duals to beta-deformed gauge theories to a class of Type IIB backgrounds with U(1)^3 global symmetry, which include the multicenter D3-brane backgrounds dual to the Coulomb branch of N=4 super Yang-Mills and the rotating D3-brane backgrounds dual to the theory at finite temperature and chemical potential. After a general discussion, we present the full form of the deformed metrics for three special cases, which can be used for the study of various aspects of the marginally-deformed gauge theories. We also construct the Penrose limits of the solutions dual to the Coulomb branch along a certain set of geodesics and, for the resulting PP--wave metrics, we examine the effect of beta-deformations on the giant graviton states. We find that giant gravitons exist only up to a critical value of the sigma-deformation parameter, are not degenerate in energy with the point graviton, and remain perturbatively stable. Finally, we probe the sigma-deformed multicenter solutions by examining the static heavy-quark potential by means of Wilson loops. We find situations that give rise to complete screening as well as linear confinement, with the latter arising is an intriguing way reminiscent of phase transitions in statistical systems.Comment: 53 pages, 5 figures; v3: version to appear in Nucl. Phys.

A New Anomaly-Free Gauged Supergravity in Six Dimensions

We present a new anomaly-free gauged N=1 supergravity model in six dimensions. The gauge group is E_7xG_2xU(1)_R, with all hyperinos transforming in the product representation {56,14). The theory admits monopole compactifications to R^4xS^2, leading to D=4 effective theories with broken supersymmetry and massless fermions.Comment: 9 pages, RevTeX

Gauged D=7 Supergravity on the S**1/Z_2 Orbifold

We construct the most general couplings of a bulk seven-dimensional Yang-Mills-Einstein N=2 supergravity with a boundary six-dimensional chiral N=(0,1) theory of vectors and charged hypermultiplets. The boundary consists of two brane worlds sitting at the fixed points of an S^1/Z_2 compactification of the seven-dimensional bulk supergravity. The resulting 6D massless spectrum surviving the orbifold projection is anomalous. By introducing boundary fields at the orbifold fixed points, we show that all anomalies are cancelled by a Green-Schwarz mechanism. In addition, all couplings of the boundary fields to the bulk are completely specified by supersymmetry. We emphasize that there is no bulk Chern-Simons term to cancel the anomalies. The latter is traded for a Green-Schwarz term which emerges in the boundary theory after a duality transformation implemented to construct the bulk supergravity.Comment: LaTeX, 42 pages; typos corrected, reference added, version to appear in Phys. Rev.

On the velocity and chemical-potential dependence of the heavy-quark interaction in N=4 SYM plasmas

We consider the interaction of a heavy quark-antiquark pair moving in N=4 SYM plasma in the presence of non-vanishing chemical potentials. Of particular importance is the maximal length beyond which the interaction is practically turned off. We propose a simple phenomenological law that takes into account the velocity dependence of this screening length beyond the leading order and in addition its dependence on the R-charge. Our proposal is based on studies using rotating D3-branes.Comment: 24 pages, 10 figures; v2: energy regularization discussed in detail, references added, version to appear in Phys. Rev.

Stability of strings dual to flux tubes between static quarks in N=4 SYM

Computing heavy quark-antiquark potentials within the AdS/CFT correspondence often leads to behaviors that differ from what one expects on general physical grounds and field-theory considerations. To isolate the configurations of physical interest, it is of utmost importance to examine the stability of the string solutions dual to the flux tubes between the quark and antiquark. Here, we formulate and prove several general statements concerning the perturbative stability of such string solutions, relevant for static quark-antiquark pairs in a general class of backgrounds, and we apply the results to N=4 SYM at finite temperature and at generic points of the Coulomb branch. In all cases, the problematic regions are found to be unstable and hence physically irrelevant.Comment: 43 pages, 18 figures; v3: typos correcte

Stability of string configurations dual to quarkonium states in AdS/CFT

We extend our earlier work, regarding the perturbative stability of string configurations used for computing the interaction potential of heavy quarks within the gauge/gravity correspondence, to cover a more general class of gravity duals. We provide results, mostly based on analytic methods and corroborated by numerical calculations, which apply to strings in a general class of backgrounds that encompass boosted, spinning and marginally-deformed D3-brane backgrounds. For the case of spinning branes we demonstrate in a few examples that perturbative stability of strings requires strong conditions complementing those following by thermodynamic stability of the dual field theories. For marginally-deformed backgrounds, we find that even in the conformal case stability may require an upper value for the imaginary part of the deformation parameter, whereas in regions of the Coulomb branch where there exists linear confinement we find that there exist stable string configurations for certain ranges of values of this parameter. We finally discuss the case of open strings with fixed endpoints propagating in Rindler space, which turns out to have an exact classical-mechanical analog.Comment: 41 pages, 16 figures; v2: minor typos corrected, version to appear in Nucl. Phys.

Three-dimensional AdS gravity and extremal CFTs at c=8m

We note that Witten's proposed duality between extremal c=24k CFTs and three-dimensional anti-de Sitter gravity may possibly be extended to central charges that are multiples of 8, for which extremal self-dual CFTs are known to exist up to c=40. All CFTs of this type with central charge 24 or higher, provided that they exist, have the required mass gap and may serve as candidate duals to three-dimensional gravity at the corresponding values of the cosmological constant. Here, we compute the genus one partition function of these theories up to c=88, we give exact and approximate formulas for the degeneracies of states, and we determine the genus two partition functions of the theories up to c=40.Comment: 17 pages, harvmac; v2: references added, version accepted in JHE

Supergravity and the jet quenching parameter in the presence of R-charge densities

Following a recent proposal, we employ the AdS/CFT correspondence to compute the jet quenching parameter for N=4 Yang-Mills theory at nonzero R-charge densities. Using as dual supergravity backgrounds non-extremal rotating branes, we find that the presence of the R-charges generically enhances the jet quenching phenomenon. However, at fixed temperature, this enhancement might or might not be a monotonically increasing function of the R-charge density and depends on the number of independent angular momenta describing the solution. We perform our analysis for the canonical as well as for the grand canonical ensemble which give qualitatively similar results.Comment: 18 pages, 2 figures; v3: clarifying comments added, references added, version to appear in JHE

Conformal chiral boson models on twisted doubled tori and non-geometric string vacua

We derive and analyze the conditions for quantum conformal and Lorentz invariance of the duality symmetric interacting chiral boson sigma-models, which are conjectured to describe non-geometric string theory backgrounds. The one-loop Weyl and Lorentz anomalies are computed for the general case using the background field method. Subsequently, our results are applied to a class of (on-shell) Lorentz invariant chiral boson models which are based on twisted doubled tori. Our findings are in agreement with those expected from the effective supergravity approach, thereby firmly establishing that the chiral boson models under consideration provide the string worldsheet description of N=4 gauged supergravities with electric gaugings. Furthermore, they demonstrate that twisted doubled tori are indeed the doubled internal geometries underlying a large class of non-geometric string compactifications. For compact gaugings the associated chiral boson models are automatically conformal, a fact that is explained by showing that they are actually chiral WZW models in disguise.Comment: 37 pages; v2: minor improvements, version to appear in Nucl. Phys.