Spin Chains and Gauge/String Duality

The stringy picture behind the integrable spin chains governing the evolution equations in Yang-Mills theory is discussed. It is shown that one-loop dilatation operator in N=4 theory can be expressed in terms of two-point functions on 2d worldsheet. Using the relation between Neumann integrable system and the spin chains it is argued that the transition to the finite gauge theory coupling implies the discretization of the worldsheet. We conjecture that string bit model for the discretized worldsheet corresponds to the representation of the integrable spin chains in terms of the separated variables.