Mass spectrum of gapped, non-confining theories with multi-scale dynamics

Abstract

Abstract We study the mass spectrum of spin-0 and spin-2 composite states in a one-parameter family of three-dimensional field theories by making use of their dual descriptions in terms of supergravity. These theories exhibit a mass gap despite being non-confining, and by varying a parameter can be made to flow arbitrarily close to an IR fixed point corresponding to the Ooguri-Park conformal field theory. At the opposite end of parameter space, the dynamics becomes quasi-confining. The glueball spectrum interpolates between these two limiting cases and, for nearly conformal dynamics, approaches the result of the Ooguri-Park theory deformed by both sources and VEVs. In order to elucidate under which circumstances quasi-conformal dynamics leads to the presence of a light pseudo-dilaton, we perform a study of the dependence of the spectrum on the position of a hard-wall IR cutoff and find that, in the present case, the mass of such state is lifted by deep-IR effects.