Midway Evaluation in Physics - Alexia Nix

Title of thesis:
Wilson Loops and Precision Holography

Student:
Alexia Nix

Doctoral Committee:
Friðrik Freyr Gautason, Valentina Giangreco M. Puletti, Watse Sybesma, Lárus Thorlacius, Konstantin Zarembo

Abstract:
The main objective of this talk is the study of holography beyond the conformal paradigm. A specific example of this is realized through the study of 1/2-BPS Wilson loops in maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories on (p+1)-dimensional spheres, by focusing on the values of p for which the theory is non-conformal. The corresponding gravity duals to these theories are given by the backreacted geometry of spherical Dp-branes, and the holographic counterpart to the supersymmetric Wilson loop is given by the partition function of a probe fundamental string in these backgrounds. The aim is to evaluate these partition functions up to next-to-leading order. However, due to the non-conformal nature of the field theories under consideration, the gravity duals are characterized by a non-constant dilaton. This has notable effects on the computation of the one-loop partition functions, which will be explored in this talk.