Introduction

This book gives an introduction to the Anti-de Sitter/Conformal Field Theory correspon-
dence, or AdS/CFT, so it would be useful to first understand what it is about.
From the name, we see that it is a relation between a quantum field theory with con-
formal invariance (which is a generalization of scaling invariance), living in our flat
4-dimensional space, and string theory, which is a quantum theory of gravity and other
fields, living in the background solution of AdS5 × S5 (5-dimensional Anti-de Sitter space
times a 5-sphere), a curved space with the property that a light signal sent to infinity comes
back in a finite time.
The flat 4-dimensional space containing the field theory lives at the boundary (situated
at infinity) of the AdS5 × S5 , thus the correspondence, or equivalence, is said to be an
example of holography, since it is similar to the way a 2-dimensional hologram encodes
the information about a 3-dimensional object. The background AdS5 × S5 solution is itself
a solution of string theory, as the relevant theory of quantum gravity.
From this description, it is obvious that before we describe AdS/CFT, we must first
introduce a number of topics, which is done in Part I of the book. First, we review some
relevant notions of quantum field theory, though I assume that the reader has a working
knowledge of quantum field theory. Then I describe some basic concepts of general rel-
ativity, supersymmetry, and supergravity, since string theory is a supersymmetric theory,
whose low energy limit is supergravity. After that, I introduce black holes and p-branes,
since the AdS5 × S5 string theory background appears as a limit of them. Finally, I intro-
duce string theory, elements of conformal field theory (4-dimensional flat space theories
with conformal invariance), and D-branes, which are objects in string theory on which the
relevant quantum field theories can be defined.
The AdS/CFT correspondence was put forward by Juan Maldacena in 1997, as a conjec-
tured duality based on a heuristic derivation which will be explained, and until now there
is no exact proof for it. However, there is an enormous amount of evidence in its favor in
the form of calculations matching on the two sides of the correspondence, turning it into
a virtual certainty, so while technically we should append the name “conjecture” to it, this
would be a pedantic point, and I shall refrain from doing so.
However, while this is true for all dualities which can be derived in the manner of
Maldacena, there are now applications to real-world physics, which I call “phenomenolog-
ical AdS/CFT,” where one uses some general lessons learned from AdS/CFT to engineer a
description in terms of quantum field theory that has the right properties to be relevant for
systems of interest, but without a microscopic derivation. In this category fall some appli-
cations to QCD, quark–gluon plasma, and condensed matter, which are described in detail

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 xviii Introduction

in Part III of the book. In these cases it is therefore important to realize the conjectural
nature of the correspondence.
Another question that we should ask is why is the AdS/CFT correspondence interesting?
The reason is that it relates perturbative (weak coupling) string theory calculations in a
gravitational theory to nonperturbative (strong coupling) gauge theory calculations, which
would otherwise be very difficult to obtain. Of course, the reverse is also true, namely
nonperturbative (strong coupling) string theory in a gravitational background is related to
perturbative (weak coupling) gauge theory, allowing in principle an (otherwise unknown)
definition of the former through the latter, but the rules in this case are much less clear. The
strong–weak coupling relation means that AdS/CFT is an example of duality, in the sense
of the electric–magnetic duality of Maxwell theory.
The applications to QCD and condensed matter are, however, hampered by the fact that
the AdS/CFT duality becomes calculable in the limit of large rank of the gauge group, or
“number of colours” on the field theory side, Nc → ∞. Also, the best understood example
of N = 4 SYM is very far from the real world, having both supersymmetry and confor-
mal invariance. When we move away from supersymmetry and conformal invariance, the
rules are less clear and we can calculate less, as we will see. Nevertheless, AdS/CFT is
a developing field, and we have already obtained many useful results and insights, so we
can hope that these methods will lead to solving interesting problems that cannot be solved
otherwise.

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