The worldsheet dual of free super Yang-Mills in 4D

Abstract The worldsheet string theory dual to free 4d N $$ \mathcal{N} $$ = 4 super Yang-Mills theory was recently proposed in [1]. It is described by a free field sigma model on the twistor space of AdS5 × S5, and is a direct generalisation of the corresponding model for tensionless string theory o...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Matthias R. Gaberdiel, Rajesh Gopakumar
Format: article
Language:EN
Published: SpringerOpen 2021
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doaj.org/article/bb93ed14c1e44bfb9c8bd57740004da4
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Abstract The worldsheet string theory dual to free 4d N $$ \mathcal{N} $$ = 4 super Yang-Mills theory was recently proposed in [1]. It is described by a free field sigma model on the twistor space of AdS5 × S5, and is a direct generalisation of the corresponding model for tensionless string theory on AdS3 × S3. As in the case of AdS3, the worldsheet theory contains spectrally flowed representations. We proposed in [1] that in each such sector only a finite set of generalised zero modes (‘wedge modes’) are physical. Here we show that after imposing the appropriate residual gauge conditions, this worldsheet description reproduces precisely the spectrum of the planar gauge theory. Specifically, the states in the sector with w units of spectral flow match with single trace operators built out of w super Yang-Mills fields (‘letters’). The resulting physical picture is a covariant version of the BMN light-cone string, now with a finite number of twistorial string bit constituents of an essentially topological worldsheet.