The Holographic RG flow to conformal and non-conformal theory

Abstract

We review some aspects of the AdS supergravity description of RG flows. The case of a flow to an IR CFT can be rigorously studied within the framework of supergravity. Here we discuss various central charges of the conformal theory (included the usually neglected ones) and we compare them with QFT expectations. The case of flows to non-conformal theories is more problematic in that one usually encounters a naked singularity. We mainly focus on the flow to an IR N=1 super Yang-Mills theory. We discuss the properties of the solution and we briefly comment on the fate of the singularity. We also compare the supergravity results with the expectations of an N=1 SYM at strong coupling.