Intersecting D3-branes and holography

Abstract

We study a defect conformal field theory describing D3-branes intersecting over two space-time dimensions. This theory admits an exact Lagrangian description which includes both two- and four-dimensional degrees of freedom, has (4,4) supersymmetry and is invariant under global conformal transformations. Both two- and four-dimensional contributions to the action are conveniently obtained in a two-dimensional (2,2) superspace. In a suitable limit, the theory has a dual description in terms of a probe D3-brane wrapping an AdS3×S1 slice of AdS5×S5. We consider the AdS/CFT dictionary for this setup. In particular we find classical probe fluctuations corresponding to the holomorphic curve wy=cα′. These fluctuations are dual to defect fields containing massless two-dimensional scalars which parametrize the classical Higgs branch, but do not correspond to states in the Hilbert space of the CFT. We also identify probe fluctuations which are dual to BPS superconformal primary operators and to their descendants. A nonrenormalization theorem is conjectured for the correlators of these operators, and verified to order g2.