Related papers: Duality Cascade and Oblique Phases in Non-Commutat…

In this talk we review some generalizations of 't Hooft and Mandelstam ideas on confinement for theories with non-Abelian unbroken gauge groups. In order to do that, we consider N=2 super Yang-Mills with one flavor and a mass breaking term.…

The loop representation of quantum gravity has many formal resemblances to a background-free string theory. In fact, its origins lie in attempts to treat the string theory of hadrons as an approximation to QCD, in which the strings…

Postulate of SL(2,\Z) invariance of toroidally compactified heterotic string theory in four dimensions implies the existence of new string (dual string) states carrying both, electric and magnetic charges. In this paper we study the…

Open string theories can be decoupled from closed strings and gravity by scaling to the critical electric field. We propose dual descriptions for the strong coupling limit of these NCOS (Non-Commutative Open String) theories in six or fewer…

In a recent paper, arXiv:1309.4877, a holographic p-wave model has been proposed in an Einstein-Maxwell-complex vector field theory with a negative cosmological constant. The model exhibits rich phase structure depending on the mass and the…

I report the results of a series of works on the phase diagram of theories with a different number of colors and/or quarks in a different representation than in QCD. Similarities as well as differences as compared to the real world are…

We study the thermal phase transitions of a generic real scalar field, without a $Z_2$-symmetry, referred to variously as an inert, sterile or singlet scalar, or $\phi^3+\phi^4$ theory. Such a scalar field arises in a wide range of models,…

During the last ten years, intriguing dualities between gauge and string theory have been found and explored. They provide a novel window on strongly coupled gauge physics, including QCD-like models. Based on a short historical review of…

We use the AdS/CFT correspondence to perform a numerical study of a phase transition in strongly-coupled large-Nc N = 4 Super-Yang-Mills theory on a 3-sphere coupled to a finite number Nf of massive N = 2 hypermultiplets in the fundamental…

We calculate the $\theta$ dependence in a cousin of QCD, where the vacuum structure can be analyzed exactly. The theory is $\mathcal{N}=2$ $SU(2)$ gauge theory with $N_F=0,1,2,3$ flavors of fundamentals, explicitly broken to $\mathcal{N}=1$…

We study the non-critical space-time non-commutative open string (NCOS) theory using a dual supergravity description in terms of a certain near-horizon limit of the F1-Dp bound state. We find the thermodynamics of NCOS theory from…

We construct the matrix description for a twisted version of the IIA string theory on S^1 with fermions antiperiodic around a spatial circle. The result is a 2+1-dimensional U(N) x U(N) nonsupersymmetric Yang-Mills theory with fermionic…

We give examples of modeling the string free energy whose behavior mimics that of QCD: a power-law at high temperature and an exponential decrease at low temperature. Although the effective description is in terms of strings, no limiting…

We investigate a two-parametric family of one-dimensional non-Hermitian complex potentials with parity-time ($\mathcal{PT}$) symmetry. We find that there exist two distinct types of phase transitions, from an unbroken phase (characterized…

We study holographic superconductor model with two scalar fields coupled to one single Maxwell field in the AdS soliton background away from the probe limit. We disclose properties of phase transitions mostly from the holographic…

We consider planar $\mathcal{N}=4$ super Yang-Mills at finite temperature with chemical potentials that couple either to the $R$-charges or the spins of the operators. We find expressions for the Hagedorn temperatures at both zero coupling…

In this paper we construct a $(2,2)$ dimensional string theory with manifest $N=1$ spacetime supersymmetry. We use Berkovits' approach of augmenting the spacetime supercoordinates by the conjugate momenta for the fermionic variables. The…

Using the gauge/gravity duality, we investigate the string breaking and dissolution of two heavy quarks coupled to a light quark at finite temperature. It is found that there exist three configurations of QQq with the increase of separate…

We review two-dimensional QCD. The report contains: 1. Introduction. 2. QCD$_2$ as a field theory 2.1 The 1/N expansion and spectrum, 2.2 Ambiguity in the self-energy of the quark, 2.3 Polyakov--Wiegmann formula and gauge interactions, 2.4…

We study large-N double-scaling limits of U(N) gauge theories in four dimensions. We focus on theories in a partially confining phase where an abelian subgroup $\hat{G}$ of the gauge group remains unconfined. Double-scaling is defined near…