On the brane expansion of the Schur index

Abstract

Abstract We consider the Schur index of $$ \mathcal{N} $$ N = 4 U(N) SYM theory in 4d and its holographic giant graviton-type expansion at finite N. We compute the world-volume brane superconformal index by a recently proposed definition of the gauge holonomy integral as a multivariate residue. This is evaluated by a novel deformation algorithm that avoids Gröbner basis methods. Various terms of the brane expansion are computed and their sum is shown to be free of wall-crossing singularities to the order we explored. The relation between the brane expansion and previous giant graviton-type represenations of the Schur index is clarified.