Supersymmetric AdS solitons and the interconnection of different vacua of $$ \mathcal{N} $$ = 4 Super Yang-Mills

In this paper we present three new families of smooth Type II string theory backgrounds. These are dual to supersymmetry-preserving deformations of 4d SCFTs. The deformations include a VEV for a global current and a ‘twisted compactification’ on a circle. We study various holographic aspects of the dual QFTs, focusing on Wilson loops and Entanglement Entropy. Additionally, we present a monotonic quantity calculating the density of degrees of freedom in terms of the energy, which interpolates between the IR 3d gapped theory and the 4d SCFT result. Other probes related to global aspects of the QFTs are briefly discussed.

Conformal to confining SQFTs from holography

Chatzis,

Fatemiabhari,

Nunez

et al. 2024

Twisted circle compactification of $$ \mathcal{N} $$ = 4 SYM and its holographic dual

Kumar,

Stuardo

2024

We consider a compactification of 4D $$ \mathcal{N} $$ N = 4 SYM, with SU(N) gauge group, on a circle with anti-periodic boundary conditions for the fermions. We couple the theory to a constant background gauge field along the circle for an abelian subgroup of the R-symmetry which allows to preserve four supersymmetries. The 3D effective theory exhibits gapped and ungapped phases, which we argue are holographically dual, respectively, to a supersymmetric soliton in AdS5 × S5, and a particular quotient of AdS5 × S5. The gapped phase corresponds to an IR 3D $$ \mathcal{N} $$ N = 2 supersymmetric Yang-Mills-Chern-Simons theory at level N, while the ungapped phase is naturally identified with the root of a Higgs branch in the 3D theory. We discuss the extension of the twisting procedure to maximally SUSY Yang-Mills theories in different dimensions, obtaining the relevant duals for 2D and 6D, and comment on the odd dimensional cases.

Confinement and screening via holographic Wilson loops

Giliberti,

Fatemiabhari,

Nunez

2024

We present the holographic dual to a family of $$ \mathcal{N} $$ N = 1 SCFTs in four dimensions, deformed by a VEV leading to a gapped system. We calculate Wilson loops in this system containing adjoint, bifundamental, and fundamental matter. We calculate the quark-antiquark energy E in terms of their separation L, finding an approximate analytic expression for E(L). This expression shows the transition between conformal, confining, and screened behaviors. Interesting phenomenology is discussed in a variety of examples. The tool used is the minimization of the F1 string action, for which the code used is made publicly available.