Emergent Yang-Mills theory

Abstract

In this dissertation we tackle the question: is there an emergent Yang-Mills theory coming from the low energy description of branes and open strings? This new Yang-Mills theory has no connection to the original gauge symmetry of the CFT. We thus explore a large N but non-planar limit of the theory. This is done with new methods developed in group representation theory. A study the dilatation operator D in N = 4 SYM theory is done since its eigenvalue, the anomalous dimension, is mapped to the energy of the open string in the IIB string theory. The construction of the spherical harmonics from the harmonic expansion on the 3-sphere, S3, is done to understand the theory of the giant graviton's worldvolume. The light-front parton picture is examined, since it explains how one can \glue" single momentum modes together to obtain higher momentum modes, and we believe that this procedure is described dynamically using magnon bound states. Following from this, we work on determining the exact magnon bound state spectrum. Finally, we test our hypothesis and see if the spectrum of the bound states matches the harmonic spectrum from the harmonic expansion on the 3-sphere, S3. A non-trivial check is also performed to show that the bound state spectrum does indeed match the spectrum coming from N = 4 SYM.