The gauge/gravity duality (Q2906685)

Written by a prominent active researcher in the field, the present overview is one of the rare examples of papers where one can find an easily accessible explanation of the now already famous AdS/CFT correspondence. AdS/CFT abbreviates for anti de Sitter/Conformal Field Theory and shows the equivalence of these two theories, which have the peculiarity that they live in space-times whose dimensions differ by 1.NEWLINENEWLINEThe point is the following: usually, this correspondence is given after conformal field theory is introduced, which represents already a good deal of mathematical apparatus.NEWLINENEWLINEHere, Maldacena goes another road: he starts with classical black holes in an arbitrary dimension of space-time, where the anti de Sitter space-time represents a member of the family of solutions of the Einstein equation. Then he presents classical scalar fields in this space-time with emphasis on the relation between bulk fields and boundary operators, and calculates the classical action for this model.NEWLINENEWLINEAfter having finished this completely general discussion, he goes over to the specific examples like super Yang-Mills theory, \(D\)-branes, and he ends up with a notice that similar correspondences exist for nonconformal fields also.NEWLINENEWLINEFor the entire collection see [Zbl 1241.83007].