Dilaton-driven confinement

TL;DR

This work presents a dilaton-driven deformation of the $AdS_5 \times S^5$ background in type IIB supergravity that preserves $SO(6)$ symmetry and 3+1D Poincaré invariance, yielding a geometry with a naked interior singularity while remaining UV-asymptotically $AdS_5 \times S^5$. The analysis shows area-law Wilson loops and a discrete dilaton-fluctuation spectrum, indicating confinement and a mass gap in the dual gauge theory. The proposed field theory interpretation posits that adding an $SO(6)$-invariant mass to the ${\cal N}=4$ SYM matter content drives the infrared to a confining regime with massive adjoint fields, organized around a UV-breaking parameter $B$ that acts as a dangerous irrelevant operator. The results connect the holographic dilaton flow to an infrared-confining phase with a QCD-like string tension and a KK-flavored hadron spectrum, while also outlining the regime of validity for the supergravity approximation.

Abstract

We derive a solution of type IIB supergravity which is asymptotic to AdS_5 x S^5, has SO(6) symmetry, and exhibits some of the features expected of geometries dual to confining gauge theories. At the linearized level, the solution differs from pure AdS_5 x S^5 only by a dilaton profile. It has a naked singularity in the interior. Wilson loops follow area law behavior, and there is a mass gap. We suggest a field theory interpretation in which all matter fields of N=4 gauge theory acquire a mass and the infrared theory is confining.

Figures (3)

• Figure 1: $V(\sigma)$ as a function of $\sigma$ for $B^2=24$ (solid line) and $B=0$ (dashed line).
• Figure 2: $\log n = 2\sigma + (\phi-\phi_\infty)/2$ as a function of $\sigma$ for $B^2=24$ (solid line) and $B=0$ (dashed line).
• Figure 3: A Carter-Penrose diagram for the solution (\ref{['ExplicitMetric']}). Each point represents a copy of ${\bf R}^3 \times S^5$.