Invasion of the giant gravitons from anti-de Sitter space

Abstract

It has been known for some time that the AdS/CFT correspondence predicts a limit on the number of single particle states propagating on the compact spherical component of the AdS x S geometry. The limit is called the stringy exclusion principle. The physical origin of this effect has been obscure but it is usually thought of as a feature of very small distance physics. In this paper we will show that the stringy exclusion principle is due to a surprising large distance phenomenon. The massless single particle states become progressively less and less point-like as their angular momentum increases. In fact they blow up into spherical branes of increasing size. The exclusion principle is simply understood as the condition that the particle should not be bigger than the sphere that contains it.