Correlators of supersymmetric Wilson-loops, protected operators and matrix models in N=4 SYM

Jun, 2009
20 pages
Published in:
  • JHEP 08 (2009) 061
e-Print:
Report number:
  • HU-EP-09-22

Citations per year

2009201320172021202402468
Abstract: (arXiv)
We study the correlators of a recently discovered family of BPS Wilson loops in N=4{\cal N}=4 supersymmetric U(N) Yang-Mills theory. When the contours lie on a two-sphere in the space-time, we propose a closed expression that is valid for all values of the coupling constant gg and for any rank NN, by exploiting the suspected relation with two-dimensional gauge theories. We check this formula perturbatively at order O(g4){\cal O}(g^4) for two latitude Wilson loops and we show that, in the limit where one of the loops shrinks to a point, logarithmic corrections in the shrinking radius are absent at O(g6){\cal O}(g^6). This last result strongly supports the validity of our general expression and suggests the existence of a peculiar protected local operator arising in the OPE of the Wilson loop. At strong coupling we compare our result to the string dual of the N=4{\cal N}=4 SYM correlator in the limit of large separation, presenting some preliminary evidence for the agreement.
  • Wilson loop: BPS
  • operator: local
  • duality: string
  • Wilson loop: correlation function
  • supersymmetry: 4
  • gauge field theory: U(N)
  • matrix model
  • perturbation theory: higher-order
  • operator product expansion