AdS/CFT correspondence

In theoretical physics, the anti-de Sitter/conformal field theory correspondence, sometimes called Maldacena duality or gauge/gravity duality, is a conjectured relationship between two kinds of physical theories. n one side of the correspondence are conformal field theories !"#$% which are &uantum field theories, including theories similar to the 'ang(Mills theories that describe elementary particles. n the other side of the correspondence are anti-de Sitter spaces !)dS% which are used in theories of &uantum gravity, formulated in terms of string theory or M-theory. $he duality represents a major advance in our understanding of string theory and &uantum gravity.*+, $his is because it provides a non-perturbative formulation of string theory with certain boundary conditions and because it is the most successful reali-ation of the holographic principle, an idea in &uantum gravity originally proposed by .erard /t 0ooft and improved and promoted by 1eonard Susskind. In addition, it provides a powerful toolkit for studying strongly coupled &uantum field theories.*2, Much of the usefulness of the duality results from the fact that it is a strong-weak duality3 when the fields of the &uantum field theory are strongly interacting, the ones in the gravitational theory are weakly interacting and thus more mathematically tractable. $his fact has been used to study many aspects of nuclear and condensed matter physics by translating problems in those subjects into more mathematically tractable problems in string theory. $he )dS/"#$ correspondence was first proposed by 4uan Maldacena in late +556. Important aspects of the correspondence were elaborated in articles by Steven .ubser, Igor 7lebanov, and )le8ander Markovich 9olyakov, and by :dward ;itten. <y 2=+=, Maldacena/s

article had over 6=== citations, becoming the most highly cited article in the field of high energy physics. >uantum gravity and strings*edit, Main articles3 >uantum gravity and String theory ur current understanding of gravity is based on )lbert :instein/s general theory of relativity.*?, #ormulated in +5+@, general relativity e8plains gravity in terms of the geometry of space and time, or spacetime. It is formulated in the language of classical physics*A, developed by physicists such as Isaac Bewton and 4ames "lerk Ma8well. $he other nongravitational forces are e8plained in the framework of &uantum mechanics. Ceveloped in the first half of the twentieth century by a number of different physicists, &uantum mechanics provides a radically different way of describing physical phenomena based on probability.*@, >uantum gravity is the branch of physics that seeks to describe gravity using the principles of &uantum mechanics. "urrently, the most popular approach to &uantum gravity is string theory,*6, which models elementary particles not as -ero-dimensional points but as one-dimensional objects called strings. In the )dS/"#$ correspondence, one typically considers theories of &uantum gravity derived from string theory or its modern e8tension, M-theory.*D, In everyday life, there are three familiar dimensions of space !up/down, left/right, and forward/backward%, and there is one dimension of time. $hus, in the language of modern physics, one says that spacetime is fourdimensional.*5, ne peculiar feature of string theory and M-theory is that these theories re&uire e8tra dimensions of spacetime for their mathematical consistency3 in string theory spacetime is ten-dimensional, while in M-theory it is eleven-dimensional.*+=, $he &uantum gravity theories appearing in the )dS/"#$ correspondence are typically obtained from string and M-theory by a process known as

compactification. $his produces a theory in which spacetime has effectively a lower number of dimensions and the e8tra dimensions are Ecurled upE into circles.*++, ) standard analogy for compactification is to consider a multidimensional object such as a garden hose. If the hose is viewed from a sufficient distance, it appears to have only one dimension, its length. 0owever, as one approaches the hose, one discovers that it contains a second dimension, its circumference. $hus, an ant crawling inside it would move in two dimensions.*+2, >uantum field theory*edit, Main articles3 >uantum field theory and "onformal field theory $he application of &uantum mechanics to physical objects such as the electromagnetic field, which are e8tended in space and time, is known as &uantum field theory.*+F, In particle physics, &uantum field theories form the basis for our understanding of elementary particles, which are modeled as e8citations in the fundamental fields. >uantum field theories are also used throughout condensed matter physics to model particle-like objects called &uasiparticles. *+?, In the )dS/"#$ correspondence, one considers, in addition to a theory of &uantum gravity, a certain kind of &uantum field theory called a conformal field theory. $his is a particularly symmetric and mathematically well behaved type of &uantum field theory.*+A, Such theories are often studied in the conte8t of string theory, where they are associated with the surface swept out by a string propagating through spacetime, and in statistical mechanics, where they model systems at a thermodynamic critical point.*+@, verview of the correspondence*edit,

) tessellation of the hyperbolic plane by triangles and &uadrilaterals. $he geometry of anti-de Sitter space*edit, #or more details on the mathematics described here, see )nti-de Sitter space. In the )dS/"#$ correspondence, one considers string theory or M-theory on an anti-de Sitter background. $his means that the geometry of spacetime is described in terms of a certain vacuum solution of :instein/s e&uation called anti-de Sitter space.*+6, In very elementary terms, anti-de Sitter space is a mathematical model of spacetime in which the notion of distance between points !the metric% is different from the notion of distance in ordinary :uclidean geometry. It is closely related to hyperbolic space, which can be viewed as a disk as illustrated on the right.*+D, $his image shows a tessellation of a disk by triangles and &uadrilaterals. ne can define the distance between points of this disk in such a way that all triangles and all &uadrilaterals are the same si-e and the circular boundary is infinitely far from any point in the interior.*+5, Bow imagine a stack of hyperbolic disks where each disk represents the state of the universe at a given time. $he resulting geometric object is three-dimensional anti-de Sitter space.*+D, It looks like a solid cylinder in which any cross section is a copy of the hyperbolic disk. $ime runs along the vertical direction in this picture. $he surface of this cylinder plays an important role in the )dS/"#$ correspondence. )s with the hyperbolic plane, anti-de Sitter space is curved in such a way that any point in the interior is actually infinitely far from this boundary surface. *2=, $hree-dimensional anti-de Sitter space is like a stack of hyperbolic disks, each one representing the state of the

universe at a given time. $he resulting spacetime looks like a solid cylinder. $his construction describes a hypothetical universe with only two space and one time dimension, but it can be generali-ed to any number of dimensions. Indeed, hyperbolic space can have more than two dimensions and one can Estack upE copies of hyperbolic space to get higher-dimensional models of anti-de Sitter space.*+D, $he idea of )dS/"#$*edit, )n important feature of anti-de Sitter space is its boundary !which looks like a cylinder in the case of threedimensional anti-de Sitter space%. ne property of this boundary is that, locally around any point, it looks just like Minkowski space, the model of spacetime used in nongravitational physics.*2+, ne can therefore consider an au8iliary theory in which EspacetimeE is given by the boundary of anti-de Sitter space. $his observation is the starting point for )dS/"#$ correspondence, which states that the boundary of anti-de Sitter space can be regarded as the EspacetimeE for a conformal field theory. $he claim is that this conformal field theory is e&uivalent to the gravitational theory on the bulk anti-de Sitter space in the sense that there is a EdictionaryE for translating calculations in one theory into calculations in the other. :very entity in one theory has a counterpart in the other theory. #or e8ample, a single particle in the gravitational theory might correspond to some collection of particles in the boundary theory. In addition, the predictions in the two theories are &uantitatively identical so that if two particles have a ?= percent chance of colliding in the gravitational theory, then the corresponding collections in the boundary theory would also have a ?= percent chance of colliding.*22, ) hologram is a two-dimensional image which stores information about all three dimensions of the object it

represents. $he two images here are photographs of a single hologram taken from different angles. Botice that the boundary of anti-de Sitter space has fewer dimensions than anti-de Sitter space itself. #or instance, in the three-dimensional e8ample illustrated above, the boundary is a two-dimensional surface. $he )dS/"#$ correspondence is often described as a Eholographic dualityE because this relationship between the two theories is similar to the relationship between a three-dimensional object and its image as a hologram.*2F, )lthough a hologram is two-dimensional, it encodes information about all three dimensions of the object it represents. In the same way, theories which are related by the )dS/"#$ correspondence are conjectured to be e8actly e&uivalent, despite living in different numbers of dimensions. $he conformal field theory is like a hologram which captures information about the higher-dimensional &uantum gravity theory.*+5, :8amples of the correspondence*edit, #ollowing Maldacena/s insight in +556, theorists have discovered many different reali-ations of the )dS/"#$ correspondence. $hese relate various conformal field theories to compactifications of string theory and M-theory in various numbers of dimensions. $he theories involved are generally not viable models of the real world, but they have certain properties which make them useful for solving problems in &uantum field theory and &uantum gravity.*2?, $he most famous e8ample of the )dS/"#$ correspondence states that type II< string theory on the product space )dSGAHtimes SIA is e&uivalent to BJ? super 'ang(Mills theory on the four-dimensional boundary.*2A, In this e8ample, the spacetime on which the gravitational theory lives is effectively five-dimensional !hence the notation )dSGA%, and there are five additional EcompactE dimensions !encoded by the SIA factor%. In the real world, spacetime is four-dimensional, at least macroscopically, so this version of the correspondence does not provide a

realistic model of gravity. 1ikewise, the dual theory is not a viable model of any real-world system as it assumes a large amount of supersymmetry. Bevertheless, as e8plained below, this boundary theory shares some features in common with &uantum chromodynamics, the fundamental theory of the strong force. It describes particles similar to the gluons of &uantum chromodynamics together with certain fermions.*6, )s a result, it has found applications in nuclear physics, particularly in the study of the &uark(gluon plasma.*2@, )nother reali-ation of the correspondence states that Mtheory on )dSG6Htimes SI? is e&uivalent to the so-called !2,=%-theory in si8 dimensions.*26, In this e8ample, the spacetime of the gravitational theory is effectively sevendimensional. $he e8istence of the !2,=%-theory that appears on one side of the duality is predicted by the classification of superconformal field theories. It is still poorly understood because it is a &uantum mechanical theory without a classical limit.*2D, Cespite the inherent difficulty in studying this theory, it is considered to be an interesting object for a variety of reasons, both physical and mathematical.*25, 'et another reali-ation of the correspondence states that M-theory on )dSG?Htimes SI6 is e&uivalent to the )<4M superconformal field theory in three dimensions.*F=, 0ere the gravitational theory has four noncompact dimensions, so this version of the correspondence provides a somewhat more realistic description of gravity.*F+,