The string/gauge theory correspondence in QCD

Understand

Ideas about a duality between gauge fields and strings have been around for many decades.

• During the last ten years, these ideas have taken a much more concrete mathematical form.
• String descriptions of the strongly coupled dynamics of semi-realistic gauge theories, exhibiting confinement and chiral symmetry breaking, are now available.
• These provide remarkably simple ways to compute properties of the strongly coupled quark-gluon fluid phase, and also shed new light on various phenomenological models of hadron fragmentation.