2008/03/31 by Ofer Aharony, David Kutasov · 4 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.78.026005
published as Phys.Rev.D78:026005,2008 · 35 pages, 4 figures, harvmac. v2: added references
arxiv created 2008/05/18 · openalex publication_date 2008/07/16 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We study the holographic map between long open strings, which stretch between D-branes separated in the bulk space-time, and operators in the dual boundary theory. We focus on a generalization of the Sakai-Sugimoto holographic model of QCD, where the simplest chiral condensate involves an operator of this type. Its expectation value is dominated by a semiclassical string world sheet, as for Wilson loops. We also discuss the deformation of the model by this operator, and, in particular, its effect on the meson spectrum. This deformation can be thought of as a generalization of a quark mass term to strong coupling. It leads to the first top-down holographic model of QCD with a non-Abelian chiral symmetry which is both spontaneously and explicitly broken, as in QCD. Other examples we study include half-supersymmetric open Wilson lines, and systems of D-branes ending on NS5-branes, which can be analyzed using world sheet methods.