The Witten Diagram Bootstrap for Holographic Defects

Abstract

We study the AdS/CFT correspondence with a brane extending in AdS, a setup which is dual to CFT in the presence of a defect. We focus on the correlation function of two local operators and the defect, which is the simplest observable with non-trivial dependence on kinematical invariants. We propose a method to bootstrap this observable which relies on supersymmetry, but does not require detailed knowledge of the supergravity and brane effective actions. After developing the method in full generality, we turn to the case of two chiral-primary operators and a half-BPS Wilson loop in $\mathcal N=4$ SYM. Working in the leading supergravity approximation, we determine the correlator in closed form for chiral-primary operators of arbitrary length. The result has elegant expressions in position and Mellin space, and it agrees with localization and an explicit calculation up to contact terms. More generally, we expect our method to be suitable in other holographic setups in the presence of supersymmetric defects.