Holographic interpolations of defect CFTs

Abstract: We propose a new class of holographic dualities between certain, generically non supersymmetric, defect conformal field theories (dCFTs) and their gravity duals. Our construction interpolates between the 1/2-BPS D3-D3 system and its field theory dual at one end, and the holographic duality presented in arXiv: 2506.14505 at the other. On the gravity side, the defect is realised by a novel D5 probe brane embedded in the $AdS_5\times S^5$ geometry. The symmetry of the induced on the D5 brane metric is $AdS_3\times S^1\times S^2$. At a certain limit the D5 brane becomes singular and resembles the D3-D3 system. Consistency requires the presence of two D7 branes on which the D5 brane terminates. The existence of boundaries induces a gauge anomaly for the D5 brane which is cancelled through anomaly inflow from the D7 branes. The full system of the D5 and D7 branes is, thus, anomaly free. Also it does not have any tachyonic instabilities for a certain range of its parameters. On the field theory side, we determined the classical solution of the ${\cal N}=4$ SYM equations of motion which we conjecture to describe the defect dual to the D5-D7 system and comment on the identification of the parameters appearing at the two sides of the duality.