Abstract
In a certain kinematic limit, where the effects of spacetime curvature (and other background fields) greatly simplify, the light-cone gauge worldsheet action for a type IIB superstring on AdS5×S5 reduces to that of a free field theory. It has been conjectured by Berenstein, Maldacena, and Nastase that the energy spectrum of this string theory matches the dimensions of operators in the appropriately defined large R-charge large-Nc sector of N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory in four dimensions. This holographic equivalence is thought to be exact, independent of any simplifying kinematic limits. As a step toward verifying this larger conjecture, we have computed the complete set of first curvature corrections to the spectrum of light-cone gauge string theory that arises in the expansion of AdS5×S5 about the plane-wave limit. The resulting spectrum has the complete dependence on λ=gYM2Nc; corresponding results in the gauge theory are known only to second order in λ. We find precise agreement to this order, including the N=4 extended supermultiplet structure. In the process, we demonstrate that the complicated schemes put forward in recent years for defining the Green-Schwarz superstring action in background Ramond-Ramond fields can be reduced to a practical (and correct) method for quantizing the string.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 3-40 |
Number of pages | 38 |
Journal | Nuclear Physics B |
Volume | 673 |
Issue number | 1-2 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Nov 24 2003 |
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Nuclear and High Energy Physics