McGill.CA / Science / Department of Physics
Informal Pizza Seminar

Wilson loop in N=4 super-Yang-Mills theory:
A test of the Maldacena conjecture

Gordon W. Semenoff

University of British Columbia

The AdS/CFT correspondence postulates an exact correspondence between a host of gravitational systems and their gauge theory duals. This seminar will review results on testing this postulate by comparing the computation of quantities using the two schemes. In particular, a certain Wilson loop operator can be computed to all orders in perturbation theory in N=4 super-Yang Mills theory. Comparison of its strong coupling behavior with computations using the supergravity dual provide a non-trivial test of the AdS/CFT correspondence. Some other aspects of computations of Wilson loops are reviewed.

Tuesday, May 15th 2001, 13:00
Ernest Rutherford Physics Building, room 326