Holographic view of causality and locality via branes in AdS/CFT correspondence

We study dynamical aspects of the holographic correspondence between d = 5 anti-de Sitter supergravity and d = 4 super Yang-Mills theory. We probe causality and locality of ambient space-time from super Yang-Mills theory by studying transmission of low-energy brane waves via an open string stretched between two D3-branes in the Coulomb branch. By analyzing two relevant physical threshold scales, we find that causality and locality is encoded in the super Yang-Mills theory in terms of an infinite tower of long supermultiplet operators. The massive W-boson and dual magnetic monopole behave more properly as extended, bilocal objects. We also study the causal time-delay of a low-energy excitation on a heavy quark or meson and find excellent agreement between the anti-de Sitter supergravity and super Yang-Mills theory descriptions. We observe that the strong 't Hooft coupling dynamics and the holographic scale-size relation thereof play a crucial role to the agreement of dynamical processes. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.