A New Deconstruction of Little String Theory

Abstract

We present evidence for a new deconstruction of Little String Theory (LST). The starting point is a four-dimensional conformal field theory on its Higgs branch which provides a lattice regularization of six-dimensional gauge theory. We argue that the corresponding continuum limit is a 't Hooft large-N limit of the same four-dimensional theory on an S-dual confining branch. The AdS/CFT correspondence is then used to study this limit in a controlled way. We find that the limit yields LST compactified to four dimensions on a torus of fixed size. The limiting theory also contains other massive and massless states which are completely decoupled. The proposal can be adapted to deconstruct Double-Scaled Little String Theory and provides the first example of a large-N confining gauge theory in four dimensions with a fully tractable string theory dual.