Gauge Theories, D-Branes and Holography

Understand

Based on a generalization of the string theoretic concept of D-brane probe, we propose a new approach to large N gauge theories which makes the holographic properties manifest.

• For any gauge theory, we define from first principles an effective action for a fixed number of "probe" D-branes in the presence of N "background" D-branes on which the gauge theory lives.
• This effective action is shown to encode all the information about the large N gauge theory.
• The analysis of the planar diagram expansion which computes the effective action yields a simple and generic mechanism explaining the emergence of holographic space dimensions: the probe D-branes move in a higher dimensional dual holographic space-time.