New insights into properties of large-N holographic thermal QCD at finite gauge coupling at (the non-conformal/next-to) leading order in N

It is believed that large-N thermal QCD laboratories like strongly coupled QGP (sQGP) require not only a large ‘t Hooft coupling but also a finite gauge coupling (Natsuume, String theory and quark–gluon plasma. arXiv:hep-ph/0701201, 2007). Unlike almost all top–down holographic models in the literature, holographic large-N thermal QCD models, based on this assumption, therefore necessarily require addressing this limit from M-theory. This was initiated in Dhuria and Misra (JHEP 1311:001, 2013) which presented a local M-theory uplift of the string theoretic dual of large-N thermal QCD-like theories at finite gauge/string coupling of Mia et al. (Nucl. Phys. B 839:187, arXiv:0902.1540 [hep-th], 2010) ($$g_s\mathop { deformation – this paper) or deformed (deformation > resolution – Dhuria and Misra in Eur Phys J C 75(1):16, arXiv:1406.6076 [hep-th], 2015) resolved warped deformed conifold, the local $$T^3$$T3 of Dhuria and Misra (JHEP 1311:001, arXiv:1306.4339 [hep-th], 2013) in the MQGP limit is the $$T^2$$T2-invariant special Lagrangian three-cycle of Ionel and Min-OO (Ill J Math 52(3), 2008) justifying the construction in Dhuria and Misra (JHEP 1311:001, arXiv:1306.4339 [hep-th], 2013) of the delocalized Strominger–Yau–Zaslow Type IIA mirror of the Type IIB background of Mia et al. (Nucl Phys B 839:187, arXiv:0902.1540 [hep-th], 2010).