Conformal Janus on Euclidean sphere

Abstract

We interpret Janus as an interface in a conformal field theory and study its properties. The Janus is created by an exactly marginal operator and we study its effect on the interface conformal field theory on the Janus. We do this by utilizing the AdS/CFT correspondence. We compute the interface free energy both from leading correction to the Euclidean action in the dual gravity description and from conformal perturbation theory in the conformal field theory. We find that the two results agree each other and that the interface free energy scales precisely as expected from the conformal invariance of the Janus interface. (c) The Authors.