Bubbling Surface Operators And S-Duality

Abstract

We construct smooth asymptotically AdS_5xS^5 solutions of Type IIB supergravity corresponding to all the half-BPS surface operators in N=4 SYM. All the parameters labeling a half-BPS surface operator are identified in the corresponding bubbling geometry. We use the supergravity description of surface operators to study the action of the SL(2,Z) duality group of N=4 SYM on the parameters of the surface operator, and find that it coincides with the recent proposal by Gukov and Witten in the framework of the gauge theory approach to the geometrical Langlands with ramification. We also show that whenever a bubbling geometry becomes singular that the path integral description of the corresponding surface operator also becomes singular.