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The non-AdS/non-CFT correspondence, or three different paths to QCD

Ofer Aharony
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Abstract

In these lecture notes from the 2002 Cargese summer school we review the progress that has been made towards finding a string theory for QCD (or for pure (super)Yang-Mills theory) following the discovery of the AdS/CFT correspondence. We start with a brief review of the AdS/CFT correspondence and a general discussion of its application to the construction of a string theory for QCD. We then discuss in detail two possible paths towards a QCD string theory, one which uses a mass deformation of the N=4 super Yang-Mills theory (the Polchinski-Strassler background) and the other using a compactification of "little string theory" on a 2-sphere (the Maldacena-Nunez solution). A third approach (the Klebanov-Strassler solution) is described in other lectures of this school. We briefly assess the advantages and disadvantages of all three approaches.

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Ofer Aharony. 2003-03-25. The non-AdS/non-CFT correspondence, or three different paths to QCD. https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0212193

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