Holographic Generalised Gukov-Witten Defects

Abstract: Spindle and disc solutions have received significant attention in recent literature. However, it is not entirely clear what these supergravity solutions represent in the dual SCFT. In this work we elucidate this issue by considering a different global completion of the spindle solution, focusing on a single conical defect. We argue that these solutions can be interpreted as the insertion of a single (generalised) Gukov-Witten defect in the bulk SCFT. We give compelling evidence for this claim by uplifting the solutions to type IIB supergravity and showing that the five-dimensional $\frac{1}{2}$-BPS solutions uplifts to the bubbling surface operators solutions. Their less supersymmetric cousins give rise to a large class of holographic generalised Gukov-Witten surface operators for which we perform a detailed geometric analysis. To corroborate these claims we compute a variety of holographic observables such as the renormalised action, stress tensor one-point function and defect entanglement entropy. In addition, we extend the holographic inflow mechanism to account for bulk-to-defect inflow to study the symmetries and anomalies of the bulk and defect.