English

Large Charge 't Hooft Limit of $\mathcal{N}=4$ Super-Yang-Mills

High Energy Physics - Theory 2023-06-02 v1

Abstract

The planar integrability of N=4\mathcal{N}=4 super-Yang-Mills (SYM) is the cornerstone for numerous exact observables. We show that the large charge sector of the SU(2){\rm SU}(2) N=4\mathcal{N}=4 SYM provides another interesting solvable corner which exhibits striking similarities despite being far from the planar limit. We study non-BPS operators obtained by small deformations of half-BPS operators with RR-charge JJ in the limit JJ\to\infty with λJgYM2J/2\lambda_{J}\equiv g_{\rm YM}^2 J/2 fixed. The dynamics in this {\it large charge 't Hooft limit} is constrained by a centrally-extended psu(22)2\mathfrak{psu}(2|2)^2 symmetry that played a crucial role for the planar integrability. To the leading order in 1/J1/J, the spectrum is fully fixed by this symmetry, manifesting the magnon dispersion relation familiar from the planar limit, while it is constrained up to a few constants at the next order. We also determine the structure constant of two large charge operators and the Konishi operator, revealing a rich structure interpolating between the perturbative series at weak coupling and the worldline instantons at strong coupling. In addition we compute heavy-heavy-light-light (HHLL) four-point functions of half-BPS operators in terms of resummed conformal integrals and recast them into an integral form reminiscent of the hexagon formalism in the planar limit. For general SU(N){\rm SU}(N) gauge groups, we study integrated HHLL correlators by supersymmetric localization and identify a dual matrix model of size J/2J/2 that reproduces our large charge result at N=2N=2. Finally we discuss a relation to the physics on the Coulomb branch and explain how the dilaton Ward identity emerges from a limit of the conformal block expansion. We comment on generalizations including the large spin 't Hooft limit, the combined large NN-large JJ limits, and applications to general N=2\mathcal{N}=2 superconformal field theories.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2306.00929,
  title  = {Large Charge 't Hooft Limit of $\mathcal{N}=4$ Super-Yang-Mills},
  author = {João Caetano and Shota Komatsu and Yifan Wang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2306.00929},
  year   = {2023}
}

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120 pages