Dualities between semiclassical strings and quantum gauge field theories.

摘要

In this thesis we study several examples of the correspondence between gauge field theories and string theories. A recurrent theme of these studies is that distinctively quantum mechanical behavior on the gauge theory side of the correspondence can have a classical or semiclassical description in terms of string calculations, as one might expect from general considerations of open/closed duality. We begin in Chapter 1 by reviewing the simplest duality, which relates Type IIB supergravity in AdS5 x S5 to N = 4 SU(N) gauge theory at large N. Working with this background spacetirne, we turn to a study of D-brane probes with large quantum numbers in Chapter 2. We employ semiclassical methods to compute the excitation spectrum of these D-branes, including corrections of order 1/N, which are related to loop effects in the dual field theory. In Chapter 3 we discuss the gauge/gravity duals with N = 1 supersymmetry which arise from placing D-branes at a conifold singularity. The inclusion of fractional D3-branes breaks conformal invariance, leading to a rich variety of phenomena in the gauge theory, among them chiral anomalies, a cascade of Seiberg dualities and confinement in the infrared. We pay particular attention to the chiral anomalies of the gauge theory and show that they can be described in terms of classical spontaneous symmetry breaking in the dual string theory. In accord with low-energy confinement in the field theory, almost all of the moduli of the supergravity solution are fixed; we conclude Chapter 3 with some observations on the possibility of stabilizing the volume of the compact space in which the conifold is embedded. Finally, in Chapter 4 we study versions of the conifold theory with D7-branes, which introduce fundamental matter into the gauge theory. By solving the classical supergravity equations of motion we identify a variant of the Klebanov-Strassler duality cascade where the rate of the cascade decreases as the theory flows to low energies.