Smooth Wilson Loops in N=4 Non-Chiral Superspace

Abstract

We consider a supersymmetric Wilson loop operator for 4d N=4 super Yang-Mills theory which is the natural object dual to the AdS_5 x S^5 superstring in the AdS/CFT correspondence. It generalizes the traditional bosonic 1/2 BPS Maldacena-Wilson loop operator and completes recent constructions in the literature to smooth (non-light-like) loops in the full N=4 non-chiral superspace. This Wilson loop operator enjoys global superconformal and local kappa-symmetry of which a detailed discussion is given. Moreover, the finiteness of its vacuum expectation value is proven at leading order in perturbation theory. We determine the leading vacuum expectation value for general paths both at the component field level up to quartic order in anti-commuting coordinates and in the full non-chiral superspace in suitable gauges. Finally, we discuss loops built from quadric splines joined in such a way that the path derivatives are continuous at the intersection.

44 pages. v2 Added some clarifying comments. Matches the published version

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Cited by in corpus (9)

• Yangian Symmetry of String Theory on $Ad{S}_3\times S^3\times S^3\times S^1$ with Mixed 3-form Flux
• Integrability of Smooth Wilson Loops in N=4 Superspace
• Bonus Symmetry for Super Wilson Loops
• Nonlocal Symmetries, Spectral Parameter and Minimal Surfaces in AdS/CFT
• Master Symmetry for Holographic Wilson Loops
• Fermionic Bogomolnyi-Prasad-Sommerfield Wilson loops in four-dimensional $\mathcal{N}=2$ superconformal gauge theories
• Supersymmetric Wilson Loops via Integral Forms
• $\mathcal{N}=3$ Harmonic Super-Wilson Loop
• Wilson Loops and Integrability