Large Winding Sector of AdS/CFT

We study a family of classical strings on R x S^3 subspace of the AdS_5 x S^5 background that interpolates between pulsating strings and single-spike strings. They are obtained from the helical strings of hep-th/0609026 by interchanging worldsheet time and space coordinates, which maps rotating/spinning string states with large spins to oscillating states with large winding numbers. From a finite-gap perspective, this transformation is realised as an interchange of quasi-momentum and quasi-energy defined for the algebraic curve. The gauge theory duals are also discussed, and are identified with operators in the non-holomorphic sector of N=4 super Yang-Mills. They can be viewed as excited states above the ``antiferromagnetic'' state, which is ``the farthest from BPS'' in the spin-chain spectrum. Furthermore, we investigate helical strings on AdS_3 x S^1 in an appendix.Comment: 1+52 pages, 10 figures, v2: references and comments added, v3: minor changes and a reference adde