Spiky Strings and Spin Chains

Abstract

We determine spectral curves for the known spiky string solutions in AdS space in the limit of large angular momentum. We also construct generic multi-spike solutions in this limit and compute the corresponding spectral data. The resulting spectral curves precisely match those of the classical spin chain describing the dual operators in one-loop gauge theory. Our results confirm the map between string theory and gauge theory degrees of freedom proposed in arXiv:0805.4387 [hep-th].