Using localization in holography

by Prof. Kostantin Zarembo (Nordita, Istituto Reale, Stoccolma)

Monday 2 Dec 2013, 15:00 → 16:00 Europe/Rome

Sala Riunioni (Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia)

Directly confronting predictions of holography with underlying quantum field theory is a difficult task that requires non-perturbative calculations at strong coupling on the field theory side. For N=4 super-Yang-Mills dual to strings on AdS(5)xS(5), an impressive progress has been made due to integrability and, which perhaps is less known, localization. Localization is a way to compute path integral directly, and can be applied to the N=4 case, as well as to N=2 theories, this way permitting one to test holographic duality for massive deformations of the usual AdS/CFT setup, for instance for N=2* theory. I will describe holographic uses of localization, as well as some peculiar features of the N=2* holography, such as quantum phase transitions at finite coupling and dimensional crossover at strong coupling.