The N=4 SYM integrable super spin chain

Recently it was established that the one-loop planar dilatation generator of N = 4 super-Yang-Mills theory may be identified, in some restricted cases, with the Hamiltonians of various integrable quantum spin chains. In particular Minahan and Zarembo established that the restriction to scalar operators leads to an integrable vector so(6) chain, while recent work in QCD suggested that restricting to twist operators, containing mostly covariant derivatives, yields certain integrable Heisenberg XXX chains with non-compact spin symmetry sl(2). Here we unify and generalize these insights and argue that the complete one-loop planar dilatation generator of N = 4 is described by an integrable su(2, 214) super spin chain. We also write down various forms of the associated Bethe ansatz equations, whose solutions are in one-to-one correspondence with the complete set of all one-loop planar anomalous dimensions in the M = 4 gauge theory. We finally speculate on the nonperturbative extension of these integrable structures, which appears to involve non-local deformations of the conserved charges. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.