Regular and Irregular Boundary Conditions in the AdS/CFT Correspondence

We expand on Klebanov and Witten's recent proposal for formulating the AdS/CFT correspondence using irregular boundary conditions. The proposal is shown to be correct to any order in perturbation theory.Comment: 7 pages, typos correcte

First passages in bounded domains: When is the mean first passage time meaningful?

We study the first passage statistics to adsorbing boundaries of a Brownian motion in bounded two-dimensional domains of different shapes and configurations of the adsorbing and reflecting boundaries. From extensive numerical analysis we obtain the probability P(\omega) distribution of the random variable \omega=\tau_1/(\tau_1+\tau_2), which is a measure for how similar the first passage times \tau_1 and \tau_2 are of two independent realisations of a Brownian walk starting at the same location. We construct a chart for each domain, determining whether P(\omega) represents a unimodal, bell-shaped form, or a bimodal, M-shaped behaviour. While in the former case the mean first passage time (MFPT) is a valid characteristic of the first passage behaviour, in the latter case it is an insufficient measure for the process. Strikingly we find a distinct turnover between the two modes of P(\omega), characteristic for the domain shape and the respective location of absorbing and reflective boundaries. Our results demonstrate that large fluctuations of the first passage times may occur frequently in two-dimensional domains, rendering quite vague the general use of the MFPT as a robust measure of the actual behaviour even in bounded domains, in which all moments of the first passage distribution exist.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figure

Correlation functions in the Coulomb branch of N=4 SYM from AdS/CFT correspondence

In the present paper we study SU(N)->S(U(N/2)xU(N/2)) symmetry breaking in N=4 SYM via AdS/CFT correspondence. We consider two stacks of N/2 parallel D3 branes separated by a distance 2\vec d. In this case there is mixing between the different l-wave dilatonic KK modes. We calculate certain the two point correlation functions in the dual gauge theory. Due to mode mixing, the diagonal correlation functions have 1/N conformal-like correction as well as deformation terms. The off-diagonal correlators are also non-vanishing and their leading order is 1/N. We discuss briefly the spectrum of the glueball exitations.Comment: 25 pages, more comments on two throat geometry, decoupling limit and correction terms, a few typos corrected, two references added; to appear in Phys.Rev.

Conformal Field Theory Correlators from Classical Field Theory on Anti-de Sitter Space II. Vector and Spinor Fields

We use the AdS/CFT correspondence to calculate CFT correlation functions of vector and spinor fields. The connection between the AdS and boundary fields is properly treated via a Dirichlet boundary value problem.Comment: 14 pages, LaTeX2e with amsmath,amsfonts packages; v2:interactions section corrected, reference adde