Thermodynamic Bubble Ansatz

Understand

Motivated by the computation of scattering amplitudes at strong coupling, we consider minimal area surfaces in AdS_5 which end on a null polygonal contour at the boundary.

• We map the classical problem of finding the surface into an SU(4) Hitchin system.
• The polygon with six edges is the first non-trivial example.
• For this case, we write an integral equation which determines the area as a function of the shape of the polygon.