On the universality class of certain string theory hadrons

Abstract Exploiting the gauge/gravity correspondence we find the spectrum of hadronic-like bound states of adjoint particles with a large global charge in several confining theories. In particular, we consider an embedding of four-dimensional N = 1 supersymmetric Yang–Mills into IIA string theory, two classes of three-dimensional gauge theories and the softly broken version of one of them. In all cases we describe the low energy excitations of a heavy hadron with mass proportional to its global charge. These excitations include: the hadron's nonrelativistic motion, its stringy excitations and excitations corresponding to the addition of massive constituents. Our analysis provides ample evidence for the universality of such hadronic states in confining theories admitting supergravity duals. Besides, we find numerically a new smooth solution that can be thought of as a nonsupersymmetric deformation of G 2 holonomy manifolds.