In an earlier paper (arXiv:1706.03371) a holographic form of the Exact Renormalization Group (ERG) evolution operator for a (perturbed) free scalar field (CFT) in D dimensions was formulated. It was shown to be equivalent, after a change of variables, to a free scalar field action in AdS_{D+1} space time. We attempt to extend this result to a theory where the scalar field has an anomalous dimension. Instead of the ERG evolution operator, we examine the generating functional with an infrared cutoff, and derive the prescription of alternative quantization by using the change of variables introduced in the previous paper. The anomalous dimension is thus related in the usual way to the mass of the bulk scalar field. Computation of higher point functions remains difficult in this theory, but should be tractable in the large N version.
We construct the D3-brane solution in the holographic dual of the N = 2* theory that describes Wilson lines in symmetric representations of the gauge group. The results perfectly agree with the direct field-theory predictions based on localization.
We study the behaviors of entanglement entropy and vacuum expectation value of Wilson loop in the Stückelberg holographic insulator/superconductor model. This model has rich phase structures depending on model parameters. Both the entanglement entropy for a strip geometry and the heavy quark potential from the Wilson loop show that there exists a "confinement/deconfinement" phase transition. In addition, we find that the non-monotonic behavior of the entanglement entropy with respect to chemical potential is universal in this model. The pseudo potential from the spatial Wilson loop also has a …
In this paper we will present in more detail a construction using Wilson lines and the corresponding dual Galilean conformal field theory calculations for analytically determining holographic entanglement entropy for flat space in $2+1$ dimensions first presented in hep-th/1410.4089. In addition we will show how the construction using Wilson lines can be expanded to flat space higher-spin theories and determine the thermal entropy of (spin-3 charged) flat space cosmologies using this approach.
We present a simple prescription for computing conformal blocks and correlation functions holographically in AdS$_3$ in terms of Wilson lines merging at a bulk vertex. This is shown to reproduce global conformal blocks and heavy-light Virasoro blocks. In the case of higher spin theories the space of vertices is in one-to-one correspondence with the space of ${\cal W}_N$ conformal blocks, and we show how the latter are obtained by explicit computations.
We develop parallels between the holographic renormalization group in the bulk and the Wilsonian renormalization group in the dual field theory. Our philosophy differs from most previous work on the holographic RG; the most notable feature is the key role of multi-trace operators. We work out the forms of various single- and double-trace flows. The key question, `what cutoff on the field theory corresponds to a radial cutoff in the bulk?' is left unanswered, but by sharpening the analogy between the two sides we identify possible directions.
We extend the relation between stochstic quantization and Holographic Wilsonian Renormalization Group to the massive fermion case in Euclidean AdS space. The original suggestion about the explicit relation between the two theories is in arXiv:1209.2242. To give a fermion bulk action the Dirichlet boundary condition and the Neumann boundary condition, there are some additional terms to the bulk action. We have confirmed that the relation also hold for massive fermion case.
Using $ζ$-function regularization, we study the one-loop effective action of fundamental strings in $AdS_5\times S^5$ dual to the latitude $\frac{1}{4}$-BPS Wilson loop in $\mathcal{N}=4$ Super-Yang-Mills theory. To avoid certain ambiguities inherent to string theory on curved backgrounds we subtract the effective action of the holographic $\frac{1}{2}$-BPS Wilson loop. We find agreement with the expected field theory result at first order in the small latitude angle expansion but discrepancies at higher order.
We propose a method to holographically compute the conformal partial waves in any decomposition of correlation functions of primary operators in conformal field theories using open Wilson network operators in the holographic gravitational dual. The Wilson operators are the gravitational ones where gravity is written as a gauge theory in the first order Hilbert-Palatini formalism. We apply this method to compute the global conformal blocks and partial waves in 2d CFTs reproducing many of the known results.
We study the fate of reparametrization invariance of Wilson loops, also known as 'zig-zag' symmetry, under the RG flow using some simple cases as guidance. We restrict our analysis to large-$N$, strongly coupled CFTs and use the holographic dual description of a Wilson loop as a fundamental string embedded in asymptotically AdS spaces, at zero and nonzero temperature. We then introduce a cutoff in the holographic radial direction and integrate out the the section of the string closer to the AdS boundary in the spirit of holographic Wilsonian renormalization. We make explicit the map between Wi…
We systematically study the spectrum of excitations and the one-loop determinant of holographic Wilson loop operators in antisymmetric representations of $\mathcal{N}=4$ supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory. Holographically, these operators are described by D5-branes carrying electric flux and wrapping an $S^4 \subset S^5$ in the $AdS_5\times S^5$ bulk background. We derive the dynamics of both bosonic and fermionic excitations for such D5-branes. A particularly important configuration in this class is the D5-brane with $AdS_2\times S^4$ worldvolume and $k$ units of electric flux, which is dual to…
We have studied holographic Wilsonian renormalization group (HWRG) of free massless fermionic fields in AdS space and its stochastic quantization(SQ) by identifying the Euclidean action with its boundary on-shell action. The natural extension of the relation between stochastic 2-point correlation function and double trace coupling obtained from HWRG computation conjectured in arXiv:1209.2242 to fermionic fields is established. We have confirmed that the stochastic 2-point function precisely captures the radial flow of the double trace coupling via this relation.
We study dual conformal transformations of minimal area surfaces in $AdS_5 \times S^5$ corresponding to holographic smooth Wilson loops and some other related observables. To act with dual conformal transformations we map the string solutions to the dual space by means of T-duality, then we apply a conformal transformation and finally T-dualize back to the original space. The transformation maps between string solutions with different boundary contours. The boundary contours of the minimal surfaces are not mapped back to the AdS boundary, and the regularized area of the surface changes.
The Polchinski equations for the Wilsonian renormalization group in the $D$--dimensional matrix scalar field theory can be written at large $N$ in a Hamiltonian form. The Hamiltonian defines evolution along one extra holographic dimension (energy scale) and can be found exactly for the complete basis of single trace operators. We show that at low energies independently of the dimensionality $D$ the Hamiltonian system in question (for the subsector of operators without derivatives) reduces to the {\it integrable} effective theory. The obtained Hamiltonian system describes large wavelength KdV t…
An attempt is made to make precise the connection between Wilson's RG and "Holographic RG" by writing Wilson's RG in a holographic form. A functional formulation is given for the exact RG evolution of a scalar field in $d$ (flat) dimensions. It is shown that a change of variables maps the action to that for a scalar field in $AdS_{d+1}$. This provides a holographic form for Wilson's RG that can be called "Holographic RG". This mapping can only be done for a specific form of the cutoff function in the Exact Renormalization Group formalism. The notion of scale and conformal invariance in the pre…
We study the Wilson line response in the holographic superconducting phase transitions in Gauss-Bonnet gravity. In the black brane background case, the Little-Parks periodicity is independent of the Gauss-Bonnet parameter, while in the AdS soliton case, there is no evidence for the Little-Parks periodicity. We further study the impact of the Gauss-Bonnet term on the holographic phase transitions quantitatively. The results show that such quantum corrections can effectively affect the occurrence of the phase transitions and the response to the Wilson line.
We show that all half-BPS Wilson loop operators in N=4 SYM -- which are labeled by Young tableaus -- have a gravitational dual description in terms of D5-branes or alternatively in terms of D3-branes in AdS_5xS^5. We prove that the insertion of a half-BPS Wilson loop operator in the cal N=4 SYM path integral is achieved by integrating out the degrees of freedom on a configuration of bulk D5-branes or alternatively on a configuration of bulk D3-branes. The bulk D5-brane and D3-brane descriptions are related by bosonization.
The holographic configurations dual to Wilson loops in higher rank representations in the ABJM theory are described by branes with electric flux along their world volumes. In particular, D2 and D6 branes with electric flux play a central role as potential dual to totally symmetric and totally antisymmetric representations, respectively. We compute the spectra of excitations of these brane configurations in both, the bosonic and fermionic sectors. We highlight a number of aspects that distinguish these configurations from their D3 and D5 cousins including new peculiar mixing terms in the fluctu…
The aim of this work is to study the holographic dual to the gauge theory with a nonzero gluon condensate. We check for consistency the holographic way of describing the condensate and calculate the expectation value of a small Wilson loop in the presence of the gluon condensate, thus obtaining the relevant coefficient in the operator product expansion of the small loop in different holographic models. We also study the effect of the condensate on the Gross-Ooguri phase transition in the correlator of two circular Wilson loops in parallel and concentric configurations. In the numerical study o…
We study the issue of gauge-invariant observables in d=4, N=4 noncommutative gauge theory and UV-IR relation therein. We show that open Wilson lines form a complete set of gauge invariant operators, which are local in momentum space and, depending on their size, exhibit two distinct behaviors of the UV-IR relation. We next study these properties in a proposed dual description in terms of supergravity and find agreement.
We study rectangular timelike Wilson loops at long distances in the exact renormalization group flow in the context of the holographic duality. We consider the 5d holographic model with an exponential dilaton potential constructed in [arXiv:1803.06764]. To probe the RG flow backgrounds at zero and finite temperatures we calculate the minimal surfaces of the corresponding string worldsheets. We show that a holographic RG flow at $T=0$, that mimics QCD behaviour of the running coupling, has a confining phase at long distances, while the RG flow with an AdS UV fixed point is non-confining.
The evaluation of BPS Wilson loops in N=6, D=3 Chern-Simons matter theory is reduced to ordinary matrix integrals via localization technique. It is easy to check that the vacuum expectation value of 1/2 BPS Wilson loops at leading order in planar limit agrees with the regularized classical string action, via AdS/CFT. Then the subleading terms in principle can be calculated by treating the string theory semi-classically. In this article we calculate the one-loop determinant for fluctuation modes of holographic Wilson loop in the dual geometry AdS4xCP3. The fermionic normal mode frequencies are …
Inspired by the AdS/CFT correspondence, we develop an explicit formal duality between the planar limit of a d-dimensional gauge theory and a classical field theory in a (d+1)-dimensional anti-de Sitter space. The key ingredient is the identification of fields in AdS with generalized Hubbard-Stratonovich transforms of single-trace couplings of the QFT. We show that the Wilsonian renormalization group flow of these transformed couplings matches the holographic (Hamilton-Jacobi) flow of bulk fields along the radial direction in AdS. This result allows one to outline an AdS/CFT dictionary that doe…
We show that Polchinski equations in the D--dimensional matrix scalar field theory can be reduced at large $N$ to the Hamiltonian equations in a (D+1)-dimensional theory. In the subsector of the $\Tr ϕ^l$ (for all $l$) operators we find the exact form of the corresponding Hamiltonian. The relation to the Holographic renormalization group is discussed.
We consider solutions of eleven-dimensional supergravity constructed in [1,2] that are half-BPS, locally asymptotic to $AdS_7\times S^4$ and are the holographic dual of heavy Wilson surfaces in the six-dimensional $(2,0)$ theory. Using these bubbling solutions we calculate the holographic entanglement entropy for a spherical entangling surface in the presence of a planar Wilson surface. In addition, we calculate the holographic stress tensor and, by evaluating the on-shell supergravity action, the expectation value of the Wilson surface operator.
We formulate a holographic Wilsonian renormalization group flow for strongly coupled systems with a gravity dual, motivated by the need to extract efficiently low energy behavior of such systems. Starting with field theories defined on a cut-off surface in a bulk spacetime, we propose that integrating out high energy modes in the field theory should correspond to integrating out a part of the bulk geometry. We describe how to carry out this procedure in practice in the classical gravity approximation using examples of scalar and vector fields. By integrating out bulk degrees of freedom all the…
We study a mathematical relationship between holographic Wilsonian renormalization group and stochastic quantization framework. We extend the original proposal given in arXiv:1209.2242 to interacting theories. The original proposal suggests that fictitious time(or stochastic time) evolution of stochastic 2-point correlation function will be identical to the radial evolution of the double trace operator of certain classes of holographic models, which are free theories in AdS space. We study holographic gravity models with interactions in AdS space and establish a map between the holographic ren…
We extend Douglas' solution of the problem of finding minimal surfaces to anti-de Sitter space. The case of a circle as a boundary contour is elaborated. We discuss applications to ${\cal N}=4$ super Yang-Mills: a circular Wilson loop and the Schwinger process, where we calculate the $1/\sqrtλ$ correction to the critical value of constant electric field.
We study $1/N$ corrections to a Wilson loop in holographic duality. Extending the AdS/CFT correspondence beyond the large $N$ limit is an important but a subtle issue, as it needs quantum gravity corrections in the gravity side. To find a physical property of the quantum corrected geometry of near-horizon black 0-branes previously obtained by Hyakutake, we evaluate a Euclidean string worldsheet hanging down in the geometry, which corresponds to a rectangular Wilson loop in the $SU(N)$ quantum mechanics with 16 supercharges at a finite temperature with finite $N$. We find that the potential ene…
In the holographic framework, a half BPS Wilson loop in ${\cal N}=4$ supersymmetric Yang-Mills in the fundamental, symmetric or antisymmetric representation of SU(N), is best described by a fundamental string, a D3 brane or a D5 brane with fluxes in their worldvolumes, respectively. We derive the spectrum of excitations of such D3 brane in $AdS_5\times S^5$ explicitly, considering its action in both the bosonic and the fermionic sectors, and demonstrate that it is organized according to short multiplets of the supergroup $OSp(4^*|4)$. We also show that the modes of the fundamental string form …
The mutual information of disconnected regions in large $N$ gauge theories with holographic gravity duals can undergo phase transitions. These occur when connected and disconnected bulk Ryu-Takayanagi surfaces exchange dominance. That is, the bulk `soap bubble' snaps as the boundary regions are drawn apart. We give a gauge-theoretic characterization of this transition: States with and without a certain defect operator insertion -- the defect separates the entangled spatial regions -- are shown to be perfectly distinguishable if and only if the Ryu-Takayanagi surface is connected. Meanwhile, st…
Holographic model of massive scalar field with its self-interaction $λϕ^n$ in AdS space is able to give a logarithmic scale dependence to marginal multi trace deformation couplings on its dual conformal field theory, where $λ$ is the self-interaction coupling of the scalar field, $ϕ$ and $n$ is an integral number. In arXiv:1501.06664, the authors realize this feature by looking at bulk scalar solutions near AdS boundary imposing a specific boundary condition between the coefficients of non-normalizable and normalizable modes of the scalar field excitations. We study the same holographic model …
We identify the symmetry underlying the recently observed spectral-parameter transformations of holographic Wilson loops alias minimal surfaces in AdS/CFT. The generator of this nonlocal symmetry is shown to furnish a raising operator on the classical Yangian-type charges of symmetric coset models. We explicitly demonstrate how this master symmetry acts on strong-coupling Wilson loops and indicate a possible extension to arbitrary coupling.
We propose a method for determining the exact correspondence between the Wilsonian cut-off scale on the boundary and its holographically dual bulk theory. We systematically construct the multi-trace Wilsonian effective action from holographic renormalisation and evolve it by integrating out the asymptotically Anti-de Sitter bulk geometry with scalar probes. The Wilsonian nature of the effective action is shown by proving that it must be either double-trace, closing in on itself under successive integrations, or have an infinite series of multi-trace terms. Focusing on composite scalar operator…
In Landau Fermi liquids, screened impurities support quasi-bound states, representing electrons bound to the impurity but making virtual excursions away. Signals of these quasi-bound states are electron-impurity scattering phase shifts and the corresponding resonances in cross sections. We consider large-$N$, strongly-coupled $(3+1)$-dimensional $\mathcal{N}=4$ supersymmetric $SU(N)$ Yang-Mills theory on the Coulomb branch, where an adjoint scalar has a non-zero expectation value that breaks $SU(N) \to SU(N-1) \times U(1)$. In the holographic dual we re-visit well-known solutions for a probe D…
In this paper, we study behaviour of Wilson loops in the boost-invariant nonequilibrium anisotropic quark-gluon plasma produced in heavy-ion collisions within the holographic approach. We describe the thermalization studying the evolution of the Vaidya metric in the boost-invariant and spatially anisotropic background. To probe the system during this process we calculate rectangular Wilson loops oriented in different spatial directions. We find that anisotropic effects are more visible for the Wilson loops lying in the transversal plane unlike the Wilson loops with partially longitudinal orien…
The influence of Wilson lines on heavy quark anti-quark potential and mass
School of Nuclear Science and Technology, University of South China（南华大学核科学技术学院）；INFN– Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare– Sezione di Bari（意大利国家核物理研究所巴里分部）；Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Alabama（阿拉巴马大学物理与天文学系）
We investigate various aspects of a proposal by Aharony and Kutasov arXiv:0803.3547 [hep-th] for the gravity dual of an open Wilson line in the Sakai-Sugimoto model or its non-compact version. In particular, we use their proposal to determine the effect of finite temperature, as well as background electric and magnetic fields, on the chiral symmetry breaking order parameter. We also generalize their prescription to more complicated worldsheets and identify the operators dual to such worldsheets.
We consider the ratio of the correlation function of an hexagon light-like Wilson loop with one local operator over the expectation value of the Wilson loop within the strong-coupling regime of the AdS/CFT correspondence. We choose the hexagon Wilson loop within a class of minimal solutions obtained by cutting and gluing light-like quadrangle loops. These surfaces do not have an interpretation in terms of dual scattering amplitudes but they still exhibit general features of the mixed correlation function. In the case of a regular null hexagon conformal symmetry constrains the space-time depend…
In holographic duality, dynamics along the emergent extra-dimensional space describes a renormalization group (RG) flow of the corresponding quantum field theory (QFT). Following this idea, we develop an emergent holographic description of a QFT, where not only the information of the RG flow is introduced into an IR holographic dual effective field theory (HDEFT), but also the UV information of the QFT is encoded in the HDEFT through the IR boundary condition. In particular, we argue that this dual holographic construction is self-consistent within the assumption of bulk locality, showing the …
We have studied a mathematical relationship between holographic Wilsonian renormalization group(HWRG) and stochastic quantization(SQ) of scalar field with arbitrary mass in AdS spacetime. In the stochastic theory, the field is described by an equation with a form of harmonic oscillator with time dependent frequency and its Euclidean action also shows explicit time dependent kernel in it. We have obtained the stochastic 2-point correlation function and demonstrate that it reproduces the radial evolution of the double trace operator correctly via the suggested relation given in arXiv:1209.2242. …
We use entanglement entropy to define a central charge associated to a two-dimensional defect or boundary in a conformal field theory (CFT). We present holographic calculations of this central charge for several maximally supersymmetric CFTs dual to eleven-dimensional supergravity in Anti-de Sitter space, namely the M5-brane theory with a Wilson surface defect and three-dimensional CFTs related to the M2-brane theory with a boundary. Our results for the central charge depend on a partition of the number of M2-branes, $N$, ending on the number of M5-branes, $M$. For the Wilson surface, the part…
We study the relations between two different approaches to the holographic Renormalization Group (RG) flow at the dual gravity level: One is the radial evolution of the classical equation of motion and the other is the flow equation given by the holographic Wilsonian RG coming from the cut off independence. Apparently, the two flows look different. We give general proofs that the two flows are actually equivalent. The role of the momentum continuity (MC) is essential. We show that MC together with cutoff independence gives the evolution equation of the boundary values. Equivalence of conductiv…
In this paper, minimal surface in $q$-deformed $AdS_5\times S^5$ with boundary a cusp is studied in detail. This minimal surface is dual to cusped Wilson loop in the dual field theory. We found that the area of the minimal surface has both logarithmic squared divergence and logarithmic divergence. The logarithmic squared divergence can not be removed by either Legendre transformation or the usual geometric substraction. We further make analytic continuation to the Minkowski signature %for the case without the jump and take the limit such that the two edges of the cusp become light-like and ext…
We review a construction of holographic geometries dual to N=4 SYM theory on a Friedmann-Robertson-Walker background and in the presence or absence of a gluon condensate and instanton density. We find the most general solution with arbitrary scale factor and show that it is diffeomorphic to topological black holes. We introduce a time-dependent boundary cosmological constant λ(t) and show energy-momentum conservation in this background. For constant λ, the deconfinement properties of the temporal Wilson loop are analysed. In most cases the Wilson loop confines throughout cosmological evolution…
Within the electrostatic formulation of holographic duals to (balanced) conformal quivers in five and three dimensions, we study Wilson loops in antisymmetric representations. We derive general expressions for various quantities participating in the formalism (VEV of Wilson loops, representation, gauge-node) and apply these to examples, connecting some results present in the bibliography. In the case of three dimensional quivers, we present a relation between Wilson loops in an 'electric' and in the 'magnetic/mirror' descriptions. In a very detailed appendix, we relate the electrostatic and ho…
We study holographic Wilsonian RG in a general class of asymptotically AdS backgrounds with a U(1) gauge field. We consider free charged Dirac fermions in such a background, and integrate them up to an intermediate radial distance, yielding an equivalent low energy dual field theory. The new ingredient, compared to scalars, involves a `generalized' basis of coherent states which labels a particular half of the fermion components as coordinates or momenta, depending on the choice of quantization (standard or alternative). We apply this technology to explicitly compute RG flows of charged fermio…
The minimization of the Nambu-Goto action for a surface whose contour defines a circular Wilson loop of radius a placed at a finite value of the coordinate orthogonal to the boundary is considered. This is done for asymptotically AdS spaces. The condensates of even dimension $n=2$ through $10$ are calculated in terms of the coefficient of $a^{n}$ in the expansion of the on-shell subtracted Nambu-Goto action for small $a$ The subtraction employed is such that it presents no conflict with conformal invariance in the AdS case and need not introduce an additional infrared scale for the case of con…
Stochastic quantization and holographic Wilsonian renormalization group of scalar theory with generic mass, self-interaction and multiple trace deformation
We study the Renormalization Group (RG) flow of critical bosonic background fields in the framework of the RG approach to string theory. In this approach quantum field theory beta-functions are the extra inputs in solving the string theory sigma-model equations. We study two different situations, the first one is the Yang-Mills theory where the coupling constant diverges in the infrared limit. The second case corresponds to a type of theories where the beta-function has a pole in the infrared limit and it changes sign through the pole (as in N=1 super-Yang-Mills theory). For this case in the s…
We provide a holographic perspective on correlation functions in Schwarzian quantum mechanics, as boundary-anchored Wilson line correlators in Jackiw-Teitelboim gravity. We first study compact groups and identify the diagrammatic representation of bilocal correlators of the particle-on-a-group model as Wilson line correlators in its 2d holographic BF description. We generalize to the Hamiltonian reduction of SL(2,R) and derive the Schwarzian correlation functions. Out-of-time ordered correlators are determined by crossing Wilson lines, giving a 6j-symbol, in agreement with 2d CFT results.
The correlation functions of two or more Euclidean Wilson loops of various shapes in Euclidean anti-de Sitter space are computed by considering the minimal area surfaces connecting the loops. The surfaces are parametrized by Riemann theta functions associated with genus three hyperelliptic Riemann surfaces. In the case of two loops, the distance $L$ by which they are separated can be adjusted by continuously varying a specific branch point of the auxiliary Riemann surface. When $L$ is much larger than the characteristic size of the loops, then the loops are approximately regarded as local oper…
In this paper we study string theory in the background $\mathcal{M}_3$ that interpolates between $AdS_3$ in the IR and linear dilaton spacetime $\mathbb{R}^{1,1}\times\mathbb{R}_ϕ$ in the UV. Via holographic duality this background corresponds to $\rm{CFT}_2$ deformed by a dimension $(2,2)$ operator. Here we discuss the holographic Wilson loop in such a model and shed more light in support of the non-local structure of the theory (Little String Theory (LST)) in the UV. We also discuss quantum and thermal phase transitions of the boundary theory.
