|
Résumé |
In this talk, I will show how to leverage the nonlinearly realized symmetries of
conformal line defects, with a focus on one concrete application: gaining insight
into confinement via the worldsheet theory of the confining string.
Understanding how the low-energy degrees of freedom on the string worldsheet
emerge from the UV gauge theory can provide a valuable perspective on the
mechanism of confinement. A particularly useful setting for probing this
relationship is to place the confining theory in AdS, with Neumann (magnetic)
boundary conditions on the gauge field. In this setup, the relevant observable is
a "long string"—a Wilson loop inserted at the boundary of AdS. At strong coupling
(large radius), its correlators can be computed using the Nambu-Goto action plus
corrections, while at small AdS radius, a perturbative expansion becomes
available. However, both approaches ultimately involve Witten diagrams, which are
technically challenging and often intractable beyond leading order.
I will explain how, in any defect CFT, the global conformal symmetry—broken by
the insertion of a line defect— imposes nontrivial constraints on the conformal
data of the defect theory. These constraints remain valid for a Wilson loop in
planar pure Yang-Mills in the AdS setup described above, and I will present
evidence that they can be used to extract perturbative conformal data that would
otherwise be very difficult to compute. Finally, I will sketch our computation
targets and what we hope to learn. |
