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The AdS/CFT correspondence : bulk to boundary map and applications

University of British Columbia

The holographic principle connects theories with gravity to lower dimensional theories without gravity. Notably, the AdS/CFT correspondence — the first concrete realization of the holographic principle — provides a one to one map between string theory in Anti de Sitter space, and a strongly coupled, large N, SU(N) super Yang-Mills gauge theory in one less dimension. In this thesis, within the context of holographic field theories, I improve on the current understanding of the map between gravity (bulk) and gauge theory (boundary) degrees of freedom. Furthermore, I explore some of the applications of the AdS/CFT correspondence to the study of strongly coupled field theories. I study the map between bulk and boundary degrees of freedom mainly by trying to determine what is the gravity dual of a subset of the boundary field theory. In the process of doing so I show how extremal surfaces, entanglement entropy, hyperbolic black holes, and boson stars are fundamental tools in this quest. Next, I explore a few examples of direct applications of the correspondence as a model building device. I discuss how AdS/CFT can be used to construct quasi realistic strongly coupled physical systems ranging from relativistic fluids to plasmas and high temperature superconductors. Finally, I compare some of the results obtained in this thesis with known standard field theory results.

Text

2014-08-21

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/50104

Physics

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ca/