Applications of the holographic principle in string theory

The holographic principle has become an extraordinary tool in theoretical physics, most notably in the form of the Anti-deSitter Conformal Field Theory (AdS/CFT) correspondence, in which classical gravitational degrees of freedom in N-dimensions are related quantum field theory degrees of freedom in N − 1 dimensions in the limit of a large number of fields. Here we present an account of the AdS/CFT correspondence, also known as the gauge/gravity duality, from its origins in the large N 'tHooft expansion, up to Maldacena's proposal that type IIB string theory in the presences of D-branes at low energy is dual to an N = 4, d = 4, U(N) super Yang-Mills on AdS⁵ × S₅ . We begin with an extensive review of (super)string theory including D-branes. We then present the general formulation of the AdS/CFT in the supergravity background of AdS⁵ × S₅ , along with several examples of how it is used in terms of the identification of bulk fields with operators on the bound- ary of a CFT. We move on to discuss two applications of the gauge/gravity duality. The first is the application of the holographic gauge/gravity correspondence to the QCDk-string. The second applies the AdS/CFT formalism to a Kerr black hole solution embedded in 10-dimensional heterotic sting theory. These two applications of the holographic gauge/gravity duality comprise the original work presented here. We follow with summaries and discussions of the background material, the original work, and future investigations.