Surface operators and exact holography

A bstract Surface operators are nonlocal probes of gauge theories capable of distinguishing phases that are not discernible by the classic Wilson-’t Hooft criterion. We prove that the correlation function of a surface operator with a chiral primary operator in $$ \mathcal{N} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mi>N</mml:mi> </mml:math> = 4 super Yang-Mills is a finite polynomial in the Yang-Mills coupling constant. Surprisingly, in spite of these observables receiving nontrivial quantum corrections, we find that these correlation functions are exactly captured in the ’t Hooft limit by supergravity in asymptotically AdS 5 × S 5 [1] ! We also calculate exactly the surface operator vacuum expectation value and the correlator of a surface operator with 1/8-BPS Wilson loops using supersymmetric localization. We demonstrate that these correlation functions in $$ \mathcal{N} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mi>N</mml:mi> </mml:math> = 4 SYM realize in a nontrivial fashion the conjectured action of S -duality. Finally, we perturbatively quantize $$ \mathcal{N} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mi>N</mml:mi> </mml:math> = 4 SYM around the surface operator singularity and identify the Feynman diagrams that, when summed over, reproduce the exact result obtained by localization.