Heavy-Heavy-Light-Light correlators from holography on the worldsheet

Abstract

We study correlation functions of light local operators and defect changing operators on the conformal line set by the 1/2 BPS Wilson line of $\mathcal N=4$ super Yang-Mills. We consider the defect changing operators associated with geometrical and internal cusp angles, which at strong coupling have a large scaling dimension and back-react on the dual $AdS_2$ world-sheet. We set up a holographic computation of correlation functions, in which the light operators are described by fluctuations around the cusped classical string solution, so that correlators of two defect changing operators and an arbitrary number of light protected operators are obtained from the on-shell action of these fluctuations. We implement this prescription in detail for the case of certain 4-point functions, with two light and two defect changing operators. Finally, since for small cusp angles the defect changing operators become light, we manage to derive relations satisfied by integrated correlators of light operators, valid at any coupling. We verify these relations at strong coupling for both internal and geometrical cusps.