AdS/CFT correspondence

A proposed duality equating a gravitational theory in anti-de Sitter space with a conformal field theory on its boundary. It relates descriptions with different dimensions and, in suitable cases, strong coupling to weak coupling.

Anti-de Sitter space: A maximally symmetric spacetime with constant negative curvature and a timelike conformal boundary. It supplies the curved bulk spacetime whose gravity is encoded by the boundary theory.
Juan Maldacena: Theoretical physicist who proposed the best-known AdS/CFT duality in 1997. His conjecture identified a concrete equivalence between string theory on AdS5 × S5 and N=4 supersymmetric Yang–Mills theory.
Gauge-gravity duality: A proposed equivalence between gauge theories and theories of gravity in a higher-dimensional spacetime. AdS/CFT is its best-developed realization and supplies its calculational framework.
de Sitter/conformal field theory correspondence: A proposed relation between quantum gravity in de Sitter space and a conformal field theory associated with its boundary. It explores a cosmological setting unlike AdS, whose boundary and observables are less firmly understood.
Conformal field theory: A quantum field theory invariant under conformal transformations, which preserve angles and rescale distances locally. It is the boundary description paired with anti-de Sitter gravity.
N=4 supersymmetric Yang–Mills theory: A four-dimensional gauge theory with maximal supersymmetry and gauge group commonly taken as SU(N). It is the boundary theory in Maldacena’s original example.
Holographic QCD: Models of strongly interacting nuclear matter built using gauge-gravity duality. These models adapt holographic techniques to questions about quarks and gluons beyond the original supersymmetric example.
M-theory: An eleven-dimensional framework believed to unify the five consistent superstring theories and supergravity. AdS/CFT includes examples in which M-theory on anti-de Sitter backgrounds has a lower-dimensional field-theory dual.
GKPW relation: A prescription relating the partition function of bulk fields to the generating functional of boundary operators. It expresses the duality as a calculational map between sources and bulk boundary values.
Type IIB string theory: A ten-dimensional superstring theory with two supersymmetry generators of the same chirality. Its compactification on a five-sphere gives the bulk side of the original duality.

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