The Large N Limit of the (2,0) Superconformal Field Theory

TL;DR

The paper addresses the problem of characterizing the large $N$ limit of the six-dimensional $(2,0)$ superconformal field theory by exploiting the AdS/CFT correspondence with the $AdS_7\times S^4$ background. It develops a holographic dictionary by computing the KK spectrum of $d=11$ supergravity on $S^4$ and mapping bulk masses to boundary operator dimensions $\Delta$ for fields of arbitrary spin, including a chirality–mass relation for fermions. It identifies a complete set of protected, level-1 primary operators formed from symmetric composites of the tensor multiplet placeholders, and clarifies that the doubleton decouples as a free tensor multiplet while non-protected operators require the full M-theory beyond supergravity. The results provide a concrete, testable holographic description of the large $N$ $(2,0)$ theory and illuminate which operators remain finite in the large $N$ limit versus those that scale with $N$.

Abstract

We discuss the large N limit of the (2,0) field theory in six dimensions. We do this by assuming the validity of Maldacena's conjecture of the correspondence between large N gauge theories and supergravity backgrounds, here $AdS_7\times S^4$. We review the spectrum of the supergravity theory and compute the spectrum of primary operators of the conformal algebra of arbitrary spin.