Related papers: A light scalar from walking solutions in gauge-str…
We consider a general five-dimensional sigma-model coupled to gravity, with any number of scalars and general sigma-model metric and potential. We discuss in detail the problem of the boundary conditions for the scalar fluctuations, in the…
Many strongly coupled field theories admit a spectrum of gauge-invariant bound states that includes scalar particles with the same quantum numbers as the vacuum. The challenge naturally arises of how to characterise them. In particular, how…
In the context of gauge/gravity dualities, we calculate the scalar and tensor mass spectrum of the boundary theory defined by a special 8-scalar sigma-model in five dimensions, the background solutions of which include the 1-parameter…
We investigate the glueball spectrum of a strongly coupled gauge theory with two dynamical scales. The main tool is the use of the gauge/gravity duality. The model we study has a known graviational dual, which arises from a type IIB D-brane…
In this Ph.D. thesis, we study various backgrounds in Type IIB supergravity which admit interpretations in terms a dual field theory, and compute properties such as effective potentials and spectra, using both holographic and field…
We study the spectrum of scalar mesons in the holographic dual of walking technicolor, obtained by embedding D7 - anti-D7 probe branes in a certain type IIB background. The scalar mesons arise from fluctuations of the probe techniflavour…
We derive and solve the full set of scalar perturbation equations for a class of five-dimensional brane--world solutions, with a dilaton scalar field coupled to the bulk cosmological constant and to a 3-brane. The spectrum contains one…
We consider two established supergravities which are known to provide the low-energy effective description of either superstring theory or M-theory: the six-dimensional theory of Romans, and the maximal supergravity in seven dimensions. We…
We compute the mass spectrum of glueball excitations of a special class of strongly-coupled field theories via their type-IIB supergravity dual. We focus on two subclasses of backgrounds, which have different UV-asymptotics, but both of…
Dilatons are pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone bosons arising from the breaking of conformal invariance. In this letter we point out that in general a dilaton mass has a power-law dependence on a small parameter related to the explicit breaking of…
A mechanism is discussed to obtain light scalar fields from a spontaneously broken continuous symmetry without explicitly breaking it. If there is a continuous manifold of classical vacua in orbit space, its tangent directions describe…
We study a class of UV-complete, strongly coupled, confining three-dimensional field theories, that exhibit a novel stabilisation mechanism for the mass of the lightest scalar composite state, relying on the existence of a critical point.…
The notion that the scalar listed as $f_0 (500)$ in the particle data booklet is a pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone (NG) boson of spontaneously broken scale symmetry, explicitly broken by a small departure from an infrared fixed point, is explored in…
We apply the dictionary of gauge-gravity dualities to study the spectrum of bound states in a special one-parameter family of strongly coupled, confining field theories in four dimensions. The top-down, holographic gravity dual description…
We identify a parametrically light dilaton by studying the perturbations of metastable vacua along a branch of regular supergravity backgrounds that are dual to four-dimensional confining field theories. The branch includes also stable and…
Within the context of a String Theory dual to N=1 gauge theories with gauge group SU(Nc) and large Nc, we identify a class of solutions of the background equations for which a suitably defined dual of the gauge coupling exhibits the…
Based on the studies in Type IIB string theory phenomenology, we conjecture that a good fraction of the meta-stable de Sitter vacua in the cosmic stringy landscape tend to have a very small cosmological constant $\Lambda$ when compared to…
We derive and solve the full set of scalar perturbation equations for a class of $Z_2$-symmetric five-dimensional geometries generated by a bulk cosmological constant and by a 3-brane non-minimally coupled to a bulk dilaton field. The…
We analyze the existence of a dilaton in gauge theories with approximate infrared conformal symmetry. To the extent that these theories are governed in the infrared by an approximate fixed point (walking), the explicit breaking of the…
We make use of the language of non-linear realizations to analyze electro-weak symmetry breaking scenarios in which a light dilaton emerges from the breaking of a nearly conformal strong dynamics, and compare the phenomenology of the…