The symmetry of large N=4 holography

Abstract

For the proposed duality relating a family of N=4 superconformal coset models to a certain supersymmetric higher spin theory on AdS_3, the asymptotic symmetry algebra of the bulk description is determined. It is shown that, depending on the choice of the boundary charges, one may obtain either the linear or the non-linear superconformal algebra on the boundary. We compare the non-linear version of the asymptotic symmetry algebra with the non-linear coset algebra and find non-trivial agreement in the 't Hooft limit, thus giving strong support for the proposed duality. As a by-product of our analysis we also show that the W_infinity symmetry of the coset theory is broken under the exactly marginal perturbation that preserves the N=4 superconformal algebra.