Conceptual aspects of gauge/gravity duality (Q1691919)

This article gives an introduction to gauge/gravity duality, based on a (conjectured) correspondence between a gravity theory defined on a $D$-dimensional anti-de Sitter space and a conformal gauge theory on the $(D-1)$ boundary. This correspondence is known in the literature as AdS/CFT conjecture (AdS stands for anti-de Sitter, CFT for conformal field theory). The article is a very readable and concise introduction to the basic concepts, only the essential formulae are displayed, many ideas are explained in words. \par The article starts with an introduction to anti-De sitter spacetimes, reviews the fundamentals of conformal quantum field theories and briefly describes the basics of string theory, before presenting the original AdS/CFT conjecture by Maldacena. \par In the second part of the article open questions and further developments are touched. In particular the questions related to (i) background independence, (ii) a formulation for a duality with de Sitter spacetimes, (iii) black hole holography and (iv) the relation between emergence and duality are addressed. \par The article presents very well the basic concepts and is recommended to all readers, who want to learn about the fundamental ideas of this field, before embarking into a deeper study with the help of the references given in the article.