Conformal field theories dual to quantum gravity with strongly coupled matter

Abstract

A holographic conformal field theory is dual to semi-classical general relativity in Anti-de Sitter space coupled to matter fields. If the CFT factorizes in the large-$N$ limit, then all couplings in its dual are suppressed by the Planck scale, making the matter fields weakly interacting. We propose a mechanism to produce CFTs whose dual matter fields couple weakly to gravity, but interact strongly with each other. We achieve this by turning on exactly marginal multi-trace deformations, and quantify the effect using conformal perturbation theory.