No abstract

Working within a five-dimensional consistent truncation of type IIB supergravity dimensionally reduced on T 1,1 , we consider supersymmetry breaking solutions with the asymptotics of the supersymmetric KS background [1]. There exists a two-parameter family of such solutions. Within this family, we show that those (and only those) solutions related to antiD-branes at the tip of the conifold correspond to dual field theory vacua where a goldstino mode is present and supercurrent Ward identities hold. Our findings do not depend on the IR singularity of the dual backgrounds, nor on its resolution. As such, they constitute an independent, necessary check for the existence of supersymmetry breaking vacua in the conifold cascading gauge theory. Our analysis relies on a holographic derivation of the Ward identities which has a wider applicability, beyond the specific system and symmetries considered here.

We study the stress tensor multiplet four-point function in the 6d maximally supersymmetric (2, 0) AN−1 and DN theories, which have no Lagrangian description, but in the large N limit are holographically dual to weakly coupled M-theory on AdS7× S4 and AdS7× S4/ℤ2, respectively. We use the analytic bootstrap to compute the 1-loop correction to this holographic correlator coming from Witten diagrams with supergravity R and the first higher derivative correction R4 vertices, which is the first 1-loop correction computed for a non-Lagrangian theory. We then take the flat space limit and find precise agreement with the corresponding terms in the 11d M-theory S-matrix, some of which we compute for the first time using two-particle unitarity cuts.

Abstract:We discuss the constraints that a conformal field theory should enjoy to admit exactly marginal deformations, i.e. to be part of a conformal manifold. In particular, using tools from conformal perturbation theory, we derive a sum rule from which one can extract restrictions on the spectrum of low spin operators and on the behavior of OPE coefficients involving nearly marginal operators. We then focus on conformal field theories admitting a gravity dual description, and as such a large-N expansion. We discuss the relation between conformal perturbation theory and loop expansion in the bulk, and show how such connection could help in the search for conformal manifolds beyond the planar limit. Our results do not rely on supersymmetry, and therefore apply also outside the realm of superconformal field theories.