Search

We examine the AdS-CFT dual of arbitrary (non)supersymmetric fermionic mass deformations of N=4 SYM, and investigate how the backreaction of the RR and NS-NS two-form potentials dual to the fermion masses contribute to Coulomb-branch potential of D3 branes, which we interpret as the bulk boson mass matrix. Using representation-theory and supergravity arguments we show that the fermion masses completely determine the trace of this matrix, and that on the other hand its traceless components have to be turned on as non-normalizable modes. Our result resolves the tension between the belief that the AdS bulk dual of the trace of the boson mass matrix (which is not a chiral operator) is a stringy excitation with dimension of order $(g_s N)^{1/4}$ and the existence of non-stringy supergravity flows describing theories where this trace is nonzero, by showing that the stringy mode does not parameterize the sum of the squares of the boson masses but rather its departure from the trace of the square of the fermion mass matrix. Hence, asymptotically-AdS flows can only describe holographically theories where the sums of the squares of the bosonic and fermionic masses are equal, which is consistent with the weakly-coupled result that only such theories can have a conformal UV fixed point., Comment: 15 pages, LateX

We study the properties of operators in a unitary conformal field theory whose scaling dimensions approach each other for some values of the parameters and satisfy von Neumann-Wigner non-crossing rule. We argue that the scaling dimensions of such operators and their OPE coefficients have a universal scaling behavior in the vicinity of the crossing point. We demonstrate that the obtained relations are in a good agreement with the known examples of the level-crossing phenomenon in maximally supersymmetric $\mathcal N=4$ Yang-Mills theory, three-dimensional conformal field theories and QCD., Comment: 20 pages, 4 figures; v2: minor corrections, references added

We present the details of the analytic calculation of the three-loop angle-dependent cusp anomalous dimension in QCD and its supersymmetric extensions, including the maximally supersymmetric $\mathcal{N}=4$ super Yang-Mills theory. The three-loop result in the latter theory is new and confirms a conjecture made in our previous paper. We study various physical limits of the cusp anomalous dimension and discuss its relation to the quark-antiquark potential including the effects of broken conformal symmetry in QCD. We find that the cusp anomalous dimension viewed as a function of the cusp angle and the new effective coupling given by light-like cusp anomalous dimension reveals a remarkable universality property -- it takes the same form in QCD and its supersymmetric extensions, to three loops at least. We exploit this universality property and make use of the known result for the three-loop quark-antiquark potential to predict the special class of nonplanar corrections to the cusp anomalous dimensions at four loops. Finally, we also discuss in detail the computation of all necessary Wilson line integrals up to three loops using the method of leading singularities and differential equations., 63 pages, 14 figures; v2: minor changes, references added; v3: minor changes, eq.(D.7) corrected

In a previous publication, we have established a collinearly-improved version of the Balitsky-Kovchegov (BK) equation, which resums to all orders the radiative corrections enhanced by large double transverse logarithms. Here, we study the relevance of this equation as a tool for phenomenology, by confronting it to the HERA data. To that aim, we first improve the perturbative accuracy of our resummation, by including two classes of single-logarithmic corrections: those generated by the first non-singular terms in the DGLAP splitting functions and those expressing the one-loop running of the QCD coupling. The equation thus obtained includes all the next-to-leading order corrections to the BK equation which are enhanced by (single or double) collinear logarithms. We then use numerical solutions to this equation to fit the HERA data for the electron-proton reduced cross-section at small Bjorken x. We obtain good quality fits for physically acceptable initial conditions. Our best fit, which shows a good stability up to virtualities as large as Q^2=400 GeV^2 for the exchanged photon, uses as an initial condition the running-coupling version of the McLerran-Venugopalan model, with the QCD coupling running according to the smallest dipole prescription., Comment: 15 pages, 3 figures; minor corrections to fit results and few comments added

In this talk we present the result for the $n_f$ dependent piece of the three-loop cusp anomalous dimension in QCD. Remarkably, it is parametrized by the same simple functions appearing in analogous anomalous dimensions in ${\mathcal N}=4$ SYM at one and two loops. We also compute all required master integrals using a recently proposed refinement of the differential equation method. The analytic results are expressed in terms of harmonic polylogarithms of uniform weight., Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures; v2: typo in eq. (4.4) fixed, 'three-loop' added to title