Spins and Giants : Fundamental Excitations in Weakly and  Strongly Coupled ABJM Theory

Abstract: The discovery of integrability on both sides of the duality between planar N=4 super Yang-Mills theory and free type IIB string theory in AdS5 × S5 has lead to great progress in our understanding of the AdS/CFT correspondence. Similar integrable structures also appear in the more recent three-dimensional superconformal N=6 Chern-Simons-matter theory constructed by Aharony, Bergman, Jafferis and Maldacena (ABJM), as well as in its gravity dual, type IIA string theory on AdS4 × CP3. However, new interesting complications arise in the AdS4/CFT3 duality. In the conjectured all-loop Bethe equations by Gromov and Vieira the dispersion relation of the magnons has a non-trivial coupling dependence which is parametrized by a function that is only known to the leading order at weak and strong coupling. In the first part of this thesis I discuss our calculations of the next-to-leading correction to this function at weak coupling. We compute this function from four-loop Feynman diagrams in the SU(2) × SU(2) sector of the ABJM model. As a consistency check we have performed the calculation both in a component formalism and using superspace techniques. At strong coupling the fundamental excitations of the integrable model are the giant magnons. The topic of the second part of this thesis is the spectrum of these giant magnons in CP3. Furthermore, I discuss our analyses of the finite-size corrections beyond the asymptotic Bethe ansatz. At weak coupling we have computed the leading four-loop wrapping diagrams in the ABJM model. At the strong coupling side of the duality I discuss our results for the exponentially suppressed finite-size corrections to the energy of giant magnons.