Integrability and the Conformal Field Theory of the Higgs branch

Understand

In the context of the AdS$_3$/CFT$_2$ correspondence, we investigate the Higgs branch CFT$_2$.

• Witten showed that states localised near the small instanton singularity can be described in terms of vector multiplet variables.
• This theory has a planar, weak-coupling limit, in which anomalous dimensions of single-trace composite operators can be calculated.
• At one loop, the calculation reduces to finding the spectrum of a spin-chain with nearest-neighbour interactions.