SU(N) gauge theories at large N

Abstract

We review the theoretical developments and conceptual advances that stemmed from the generalization of QCD to the limit of a large number of color charges, originally proposed by 't Hooft. Then, after introducing the gauge-invariant non-perturbative formulation of non-Abelian gauge theories on a spacetime lattice, we present a selection of results from recent lattice studies of theories with a different number of colors, and the findings obtained from their extrapolation to the 't Hooft limit. We conclude with a brief discussion and a summary.

Comments: 2+97 pages, 29 pdf figures; prepared for submission to Physics Reports. V2: 3+104 pages, 30 figures: references added, discussion expanded, typos corrected: version submitted to and published in Physics Reports