Holographic RG flow triggered by a classically marginal operator

Abstract

We study the holographic renormalization group (RG) flow triggered by a classically marginal operator. When a marginal operator deforms a conformal field theory, it does not yield a nontrivial renormalization group flow at the classical level. At the quantum level, however, quantum corrections modify a marginal operator into one of the truly marginal, marginally relevant, and marginally irrelevant operators and can generate a nontrivial RG flow. We investigate the holographic description of a RG flow triggered by a marginal operator with quantum corrections. We look into how the physical quantities of a deformed theory, a coupling constant and the vacuum expectation value, rely on the RG scale. We further discuss the holographic description of the trace anomaly caused by the gluon condensation.