Holographic Ensembles in Type IIB

Abstract

We study holographic ensembles in type IIB string theory on the Schur twisted AdS$_5 \times S^5$ background, and its corresponding boundary partition function: the Schur index of $\mathcal{N}=4$ SYM. In the supergravity limit the two natural ensembles are either at fixed flux on $S^5$, corresponding to a boundary theory at fixed rank, or its conjugate choice of fixed potential on the boundary of AdS$_5$, corresponding on the boundary to a grand canonical ensemble of theories at fixed chemical potential. Due to the self-dual nature of the five-form in type IIB supergravity the choice of ensembles is not seen in the standard bulk action, but rather by the coupling of an additional topological term. We compute the bulk partition function to one loop, including the Kaluza-Klein determinant and the measure of the ensemble-changing sum, and show that depending on the sign of this topological term it matches the perturbative boundary partition function in either the canonical or the grand canonical ensemble.