Fragmentation and defragmentation of strings in type IIA and their holographic duals

Abstract

Abstract We probe type IIA geometries with folded semiclassical strings those encode the strong coupling dynamics associated with long operators in a class of SCFTs pertaining to spacetimes whose dimension vary from 6d down to 2d. We particularly focus on folded string configurations those are extended through stack of flavor Dp (p = 6, 8) branes localized along the internal manifold. Considering some specific examples within the realm of $$ \mathcal{N} $$ N = 2 linear quivers, we show that the associated string spectrum exhibits a pole as the string approaches flavor D6 branes. We identify this as a fragmentation of long operators in the dual $$ \mathcal{N} $$ N = 2 SCFTs. On the other hand, a similar analysis for $$ \mathcal{N} $$ N = (1, 0) SCFTs in 6d as well as $$ \mathcal{N} $$ N = (0, 4) SCFTs in 4d reveals a set of new dispersion relations at strong coupling. Based on semiclassical calculations, we set an argument that explains either of these cases.