Matching gauge theory and string theory in a decoupling limit of AdS/CFT

Understand

We identify a regime of the AdS/CFT correspondence in which we can quantitatively match N=4 super Yang-Mills (SYM) for small 't Hooft coupling with weakly coupled type IIB string theory on AdS_5 x S^5.

• We approach this regime by taking the same decoupling limit on both sides of the correspondence.
• On the gauge theory side only the states in the SU(2) sector survive, and in the planar limit the Hamiltonian is given by the XXX_{1/2} Heisenberg spin chain.
• On the string theory side we show that the decoupling limit corresponds to a non-relativistic limit.