Related papers: Saturation and Confinement: Analyticity, Unitarity…
A relation between confinement and Maldacena conjecture is briefly discussed. The gauge symmetry enhancement for two coincident D-6-branes is analyzed from the viewpoint of the hypermultiplet low-energy effective action given by the N=2…
The study of AdS/CFT (or gauge/gravity) duality has been one of the most active and illuminating areas of research in string theory over the past decade. The scope of its relevance and the insights it is providing seem to be ever expanding.…
String theory has long ago been initiated by the quest for a theoretical explanation of the observed high-energy ``Reggeization'' of strong interaction amplitudes. In terms of quantum field theory, it is the so-called ``soft'' regime, where…
We formulate a correspondence between non-relativistic conformal field theories (NRCFTs) in d-1 spatial dimensions and gravitational theories in AdS_{d+2} backgrounds with one compactified lightlike direction. The breaking of the maximal…
The focusing theorem in General Relativity underlies causality, singularity theorems, entropy inequalities, and more. In AdS/CFT, we show that focusing in the bulk leads to a bound on CFT $n$-point functions that is generally stronger than…
The AdS/CFT correspondence provides a new perspective on recurrent questions in General Relativity such as the allowed boundary conditions at infinity and the definition of gravitational conserved charges. Here we review the main insights…
Unitarity corrections to the BFKL description of high energy hard scattering are viewed in large $N_c$ QCD in light-cone quantization. In a center of mass frame unitarity corrections to high energy hard scattering are manifestly…
We study the positivity properties of the leading Regge trajectory in higher-dimensional, unitary, conformal field theories (CFTs). These conditions correspond to higher spin generalizations of the averaged null energy condition (ANEC). By…
Recent results on the slope of the $pp$ diffraction cone measured by TOTEM at $7$ and $8$ GeV show an unexpected rapid rise in $s$, close to $B(s)\sim \ln^2$, rather than $\ln s$, typical of the Regge-pole predictions. We show that the new…
We analyze vacuum instability of strongly coupled gauge theories in a constant electric field using AdS/CFT correspondence. The model is the N=2 1-flavor supersymmetric large N_c QCD in the strong 't Hooft coupling limit. We calculate the…
The past few years have witnessed a remarkable crossover of string theoretical ideas from the abstract world of geometrical forms to the concrete experimental realm of condensed matter physics. The basis for this --- variously known as…
An approach to QCD vacuum as a medium describable in terms of statistical ensemble of almost everywhere homogeneous Abelian (anti-)self-dual gluon fields is briefly reviewed. These fields play the role of the confining medium for color…
This is the content of a set of lectures given at the XIII Jorge Andre Swieca Summer School on Particles and Fields, held in Campos do Jordao, Brazil in January 2005. They intend to be a basic introduction to the topic of gauge/gravity…
We consider generalizations of the AdS/CFT correspondence in which probe branes are embedded in gravity backgrounds dual to either conformal or confining gauge theories. These correspond to defect conformal field theories (dCFT) or QCD-like…
We explore the relation between positivity of the energy constraints in conformal field theories and causality in their dual gravity description. Our discussion involves CFTs with different central charges whose description, in the gravity…
Inspired in the AdS/CFT correspondence one can look for dualities between string theory and non conformal field theories. Exact dualities in the non conformal case are intricate but approximations can be helpful in extracting physical…
We consider an example of vectorial AdS_5/CFT_4 duality when the boundary theory is described by N free complex or real Maxwell fields. It is dual to a particular ("type C") higher spin theory in AdS_5 containing fields in special…
The AdS/CFT correspondence between theories in AdS space and conformal field theories in physical space-time provides an analytic, semi-classical, color-confining model for strongly-coupled QCD. The soft-wall AdS/QCD model modified by a…
In the ${\rm AdS}_3/{\rm CFT}_2$ setup we elucidate how gauge invariant boundary patterns of entanglement of the CFT vacuum are encoded into the bulk via the coefficient dynamics of an $A_{N-3}$, $N\geq 4$ cluster algebra. In the static…
We propose a mechanism for confinement: analytic continuation beyond infinite coupling in the space of the coupling constant. The analytic continuation is realized by renormalization group flows from the weak to the strong coupling regime.…