Comparing top-down and bottom-up holographic defects and boundaries

Abstract

In this work we consider domain walls and end-of-the-world branes in AdS/CFT, holographically dual to codimension-one conformal defects and conformal boundaries respectively. In this setting there is an analogue of the ``bulk point'' singularity in boundary correlation functions, which we use to compare top-down and bottom-up constructions of these systems. For example, for a range of parameters the D3/D5 boundary CFT cannot be imitated by a tensionful end-of-the-world brane coupled to Einstein gravity, and in another range it can be modeled with a negative tension brane. Along the way we compute the central charge $b$ for the M2/M5 boundary CFT.