Related papers: Renormalization in large-$N$ QCD is incompatible w…
The QCD axion solving the strong CP problem may originate from antisymmetric tensor gauge fields in compactified string theory, with a decay constant around the GUT scale. Such possibility appears to be ruled out now by the detection of…
We propose an electric-magnetic duality and conjecture an exact conformal window for a class of non-supersymmetric U(N_c) gauge theories with fermions in the (anti)symmetric representation of the gauge group and N_f additional scalar and…
This talk begins with some history and basic facts about string theory and its connections with strong interactions. Comparisons of stacks of Dirichlet branes with curved backgrounds produced by them are used to motivate the AdS/CFT…
We extend recent remarkable progress in the comparison of the dynamical energy spectrum of rotating closed strings in AdS_5xS^5 and the scaling weights of the corresponding non-near-BPS operators in planar N=4 supersymmetric gauge theory.…
We consider duality between type 0B string theory on $AdS_5\times S^5$ and the planar CFT on $N$ electric D3-branes coincident with $N$ magnetic D3-branes. It has been argued that this theory is stable up to a critical value of the `t Hooft…
We point out that perturbation theory in conjunction with the renormalization group (RG) puts a severe constraint on the structure of the large-N non-perturbative glueball propagators in SU(N) pure YM, in QCD and in n=1 SUSY QCD with…
Recently we discovered and discussed non-Abelian duality in the quark vacua of N=2 super-Yang-Mills theory with the U(N) gauge group and N_f flavors (N_f>N). Both theories from the dual pair support non-Abelian strings which confine…
Gravity duals for little string theories --- which give rise to four-dimensional theories that undergo permanent confinement in the infrared --- have not been studied in great detail. We address this question in the framework of heterotic…
We show that the one loop amplitudes of open and closed string theory in a constant background two-form tensor field are characterized by an effective string tension larger than the fundamental string tension, and by the appearance of…
We find an asymptotic solution for two-, three- and multi-point correlators of local gauge-invariant operators, in a lower-spin sector of massless large-$N$ $QCD$, in terms of glueball and meson propagators, in such a way that the solution…
Compactification of Type IIB superstring on an $AdS_5 \times S^5/\Gamma$ background leads to SU(N) gauge field theories with prescribed matter representations. In the 't Hooft limit of large N such theories are conformally finite. For…
The weakly-coupled heterotic string is known to have problems of dilaton/moduli stabilization, supersymmetry breaking (by hidden-sector gaugino condensation), gauge coupling unification (or the Newton's constant), QCD axion, as well as…
We consider 2-dimensional QCD on a cylinder, where space is a circle of length $L$. We formulate the theory in terms of gauge-invariant gluon operators and multiple-winding meson (open string) operators. The meson bilocal operators satisfy…
We provide outstanding numerical evidence that in large-N massless QCD the joint spectrum of the masses squared, for fixed integer spin s and unspecified parity and charge conjugation, obeys exactly the following laws: m_k^2 = (k+s/2)…
A non-supersymmetric ten-dimensional open string theory is constructed as an orbifold of type I string theory, and as an orientifold of the bosonic type B theory. It is purely bosonic, and cancellation of massless tadpoles requires the…
These lectures trace the origin of string theory as a theory of hadronic interactions (predating QCD itself) to the present ideas on how the QCD string may arise in Superstring theory in a suitably deformed background metric. The…
We propose gauging matrix models of string theory to eliminate unwanted non-singlet states. To this end we perform a discretised light-cone quantisation of large N gauge theory in 1+1 dimensions, with scalar or fermionic matter fields…
For correlators in $\mathcal{N}=4$ Super Yang-Mills preserving half the supersymmetry, we manifestly recast the gauge theory Feynman diagram expansion as a sum over dual closed strings. Each individual Feynman diagram maps on to a Riemann…
Renormalization group evolution of QCD composite light-cone operators, built from two and more quark and gluon fields, is responsible for the logarithmic scaling violations in diverse physical observables. We analyze spectra of anomalous…
We find that tachyonic orbifold examples of AdS/CFT have corresponding instabilities at small radius, and can decay to more generic gauge theories. We do this by computing a destabilizing Coleman-Weinberg effective potential for twisted…