Current correlators in the Coulomb branch of N=4 SYM

Abstract

We study correlators of R-symmetry currents in the Coulomb branch of N = 4 supersymmetric gauge theory in the large-N limit, using the AdS/CFT correspondence. In particular, we consider gauge fields in the presence of gravity and scalar fields parameterizing the coset SL(6,R)/SO(6) in the context of five-dimensional gauged supergravity. From a ten-dimensional point of view these backgrounds correspond to continuous D3-brane distributions. We find the surprising result that all 2-point functions of gauge currents fall into the same universality class, irrespectively of whether they correspond to broken or unbroken symmetries. We show that the problem of finding the spectrum can be mapped into an equivalent Schroedinger problem for supersymmetric quantum mechanics. The corresponding potential is the supersymmetric partner of the potential arising in studies of the spectrum for massless scalars and transverse graviton fluctuations in these backgrounds and the associated spectra are also identical. We discuss in detail two examples where these computations can be done explicitly as in the conformal case.

LaTeX2e, 26 pages; v2: detailed explanations on the decoupling of scalars and gauge field fluctuations added, references; v5: in an addendum (in collaboration with D. Freedman and K. Skenderis) we demonstrate that the zero-mass poles found in the supergravity calculation are in agreement with field theory, thus resolving a puzzle in earlier versions of the paper

References in corpus (7)

• The String Dual of a Confining Four-Dimensional Gauge Theory
• N=2 Supersymmetric RG Flows and the IIB Dilaton
• The Enhancon and N=2 Gauge Theory/Gravity RG Flows
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• Anatomy of Two Holographic Renormalization Group Flows
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Cited by in corpus (18)

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• Holographic Renormalization and Ward Identities with the Hamilton-Jacobi Method
• A Gravity Dual of the Chiral Anomaly
• Correlation Functions in Holographic Renormalization Group Flows
• Correlation functions in a cascading N=1 gauge theory from supergravity
• Holographic models of composite Higgs in the Veneziano limit. Part I. Bosonic sector
• The chiral anomaly from M theory
• Towards holographic walking from N=4 super Yang-Mills
• (Non-)perturbative tests of the AdS/CFT correspondence
• Holographic three-point functions: one step beyond the tradition
• The Coulomb branch of N=4 SYM and dilatonic scions in supergravity
• Dilatonic states near holographic phase transitions
• On Exact Symmetries and Massless Vectors in Holographic Flows and other Flux Vacua
• Gravity duals for the Coulomb branch of marginally deformed N=4 Yang-Mills
• PP-waves from rotating and continuously distributed D3-branes