Speaker
Description
I will talk about 3-sphere partition functions of various 3d N = 2 holographic SCFTs arising from the N stack of M2-branes in the ’t Hooft limit. I will first explain how to evaluate the free energy F = −log Z analytically at the planar level via saddle point approximation, tracking the first subleading corrections in the large ’t Hooft coupling λ expansion. Subsequently, I present the numerical approach improving these results to all orders in the large λ expansion. Remarkably, the resulting planar free energies turn out to take a universal form, supporting a prediction that these S3 partition functions are all given in terms of an Airy function even beyond the special cases where the Airy formulae were derived analytically in the literature; in this context I also present new Airy conjectures in several examples. Lastly I discuss holographic implications of these subleading behaviors, involving quantum corrections to the M-theory path integrals around dual asymptotically Euclidean AdS4 backgrounds with the corresponding internal manifolds.
