AdS/QCD

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In theoretical physics, the AdS/QCD correspondence is a program to describe Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) in terms of a dual gravitational theory, following the principles of the AdS/CFT correspondence in a setup where the quantum field theory is not a conformal field theory.

Such an alternative description of QCD could provide the physicists with new procedures to calculate many observables more efficiently. The idea of AdS/QCD goes back to a paper by Gerard 't Hooft who had shown that the limit of a gauge theory with a large number of colors is a version of string theory. The picture became much more specific in 1997 when Juan Maldacena identified explicit string theories that are equivalent to various gauge theories with supersymmetry.

While many physicists such as Alexander Polyakov believe that this idea is very good, some QCD experts such as Frank Wilczek remain skeptical whether or not this program may lead to quantitative, accurate predictions that can't be extracted from QCD itself.