No Arabic abstract
Defect conformal field theories (dCFTs) have been attracting increased attention recently, mainly because they enable us to bridge the gap between idealistic, highly symmetric models of our world (such as the particle/string duality) and real-world systems. This talk is about the AdS/defect CFT correspondence, an exciting new proposal that joins the forces of holography, integrability, supersymmetric localization and the conformal bootstrap program in a framework that is appropriate for the study of defects in real-world systems. After introducing dCFTs and some of their holographic realizations, we will present some recent results for the one-point functions of the integrable dCFTs that are the holographic duals of the D3-probe-D5 and the D3-probe-D7 systems of intersecting branes.
We study SU(N) Yang-Mills-Chern-Simons theory in the presence of defects that shift the Chern-Simons level from a holographic point of view by embedding the system in string theory. The model is a D3-D7 system in Type IIB string theory, whose gravity dual is given by the AdS soliton background with probe D7-branes attaching to the AdS boundary along the defects. We holographically renormalize the free energy of the defect system with sources, from which we obtain the correlation functions for certain operators naturally associated to these defects. We find interesting phase transitions when the separation of the defects as well as the temperature are varied. We also discuss some implications for the Fractional Quantum Hall Effect and for two-dimensional QCD.
We explore the two holographic complexity proposals for the case of a 2d boundary CFT with a conformal defect. We focus on a Randall-Sundrum type model of a thin AdS$_2$ brane embedded in AdS$_3$. We find that, using the complexity=volume proposal, the presence of the defect generates a logarithmic divergence in the complexity of the full boundary state with a coefficient which is related to the central charge and to the boundary entropy. For the complexity=action proposal we find that the complexity is not influenced by the presence of the defect. This is the first case in which the results of the two holographic proposals differ so dramatically. We consider also the complexity of the reduced density matrix for subregions enclosing the defect. We explore two bosonic field theory models which include two defects on opposite sides of a periodic domain. We point out that for a compact boson, current free field theory definitions of the complexity would have to be generalized to account for the effect of zero-modes.
We extend the ideas of using AdS/CFT to calculate energy loss of extended defects in strongly coupled systems to general holographic metrics. We find the equations of motion governing uniformly moving defects of various dimension and determine the corresponding energy loss rates in terms of the metric coefficients. We apply our formulae to the specific examples of both bulk geometries created by general Dp-branes, as well as to holographic superfluids. For the Dp-branes, we find that the energy loss of our defect, in addition to the expected quadratic dependence on velocity, depends on velocity only via an effective blueshifted temperature - despite the existence of a microscopic length scale in the theory. We also find, for a certain value of p and dimension of the defect, that the energy loss has no dependence on temperature or velocity other than the aforementioned quadratic dependence on velocity. For the superfluid example, we find agreement with previous results on the existence of a cutoff velocity, below which the probe experiences no drag force. For both examples we can easily extend the equations of motion and energy loss to defects of larger dimension.
We use the exact-deconstruction prescription to lift various squashed-$S^3$ partition functions with supersymmetric-defect insertions to four-dimensional superconformal indices. Starting from three-dimensional circular-quiver theories with vortex-loop-operator insertions, we recover the index of four-dimensional theories in the presence of codimension-two surface defects with (2,2) supersymmetry. The case of deconstruction with Wilson-loop insertions is discussed separately. We provide evidence that a certain prescription leads to the index of four-dimensional theories in the presence of surface defects with (4,0) supersymmetry. In addition, we deconstruct the index of four-dimensional gauge theories with codimension-one 1/2-BPS defects, starting from three-dimensional circular-quiver theories containing localised matter/gauge-field insertions at specific nodes. We also clarify certain calculational and conceptual points related to exact deconstruction.
Using the AdS/CFT correspondence, we probe the scale-dependence of thermalization in strongly coupled field theories following a quench, via calculations of two-point functions, Wilson loops and entanglement entropy in d=2,3,4. In the saddlepoint approximation these probes are computed in AdS space in terms of invariant geometric objects - geodesics, minimal surfaces and minimal volumes. Our calculations for two-dimensional field theories are analytical. In our strongly coupled setting, all probes in all dimensions share certain universal features in their thermalization: (1) a slight delay in the onset of thermalization, (2) an apparent non-analyticity at the endpoint of thermalization, (3) top-down thermalization where the UV thermalizes first. For homogeneous initial conditions the entanglement entropy thermalizes slowest, and sets a timescale for equilibration that saturates a causality bound over the range of scales studied. The growth rate of entanglement entropy density is nearly volume-independent for small volumes, but slows for larger volumes.