Large Winding Sector of AdS/CFT

We study a family of classical strings on R × S subspace of the AdS5 × S background that interpolates between pulsating strings and single-spike strings. They are obtained from the helical strings of hep-th/0609026 by interchanging worldsheet time and space coordinates, which maps rotating/spinning string states with large spins to oscillating states with large winding numbers. From a finite-gap perspective, this transformation is realised as an interchange of quasi-momentum and quasi-energy defined for the algebraic curve. The gauge theory duals are also discussed, and are identified with operators in the non-holomorphic sector of N = 4 super Yang-Mills. They can be viewed as excited states above the “antiferromagnetic” state, which is “as far from BPS as possible” in the spin-chain spectrum. Furthermore, we investigate helical strings on AdS3 × S in an appendix. a [email protected] b [email protected] c [email protected] d [email protected]