HEP Theory Journal Club

Scalar Double-trace Deformations in AdS/CFT

Anh-Khoi Trinh

McGill

Scalar double-trace deformations of CFTs have been well studied in the early days of AdS/CFT. Recently, it had been proposed that one could attempt to deform certain supersymmetric CFTs by such a deformation in order to obtain a non-supersymmetric CFT in the IR that could preserve a stable holographic dual. Such a setup would be in direct contradiction of the AdS swampland conjecture by 1610.01533. In this talk, I will review the literature pertaining to the scalar double-trace deformation and present the proposal by 1709.09159 to obtain a non-supersymmetric CFT. I will then present preliminary results that suggests that these types of deformations will lead to unstable AdS vacua that will be sensitive to brane nucleation.