Holographic duals of the N=1*gauge theory

We use the long-wavelength effective theory of black branes (blackfold approach) to perturbatively construct holographic duals of the vacua of the N = 1* supersymmetric gauge theory. Employing the mechanism of Polchinski and Strassler, we consider wrapped black five-brane probes with D3-brane charge moving in the perturbative supergravity backgrounds corresponding to the high- and low-temperature phases of the gauge theory. Our approach recovers the results for the brane potentials and equilibrium configurations known in the literature in the extremal limit, while away from extremality we find metastable black D3-NS5 configurations with horizon topology R-3 x S-2 x S-3 in certain regimes of parameter space, which cloak potential brane singularities. We uncover novel features of the phase diagram of the N = 1* gauge theory in different ensembles and provide further evidence for the appearance of metastable states in holographic backgrounds dual to confining gauge theories.