The BMN limit
reviews
TASI 2003 Lectures on AdS/CFT
by Juan M. Maldacena (hep-th/0309246, 46 pages)
Maldacena's TASI lectures introduce the AdS/CFT correspondence and in particular the plane-wave limit.
Lectures on the Plane-Wave String/Gauge Theory Duality
by Jan Plefka (hep-th/0307101, 46 pages)
Plefka's review of the plane-wave gauge/gravity duality concentrates on the gauge-theory side of
the correspondence and introduces an effective formalism that reduces the gauge-theory computations to quantum mechanics.
Plefka describes how string field theory calculations match gauge theory calculations. An elementary introduction to light-cone string field theory is included here as well.
The Duality between IIB String Theory on PP-wave and N=4 SYM: a Status Report
by Rodolfo Russo, Alessandro Tanzin (hep-th/0401155, 35 pages, 5 figures)
Spinning strings and AdS/CFT duality
by A.A. Tseytlin (hep-th/0311139, 54 pages)
Tseytlin reviews how certain string states in Anti-de Sitter space (crossed with S^5) can be studied in detail using semiclassical methods, allowing detailed studies of the AdS/CFT duality to be carried out. These states have large angular momentum on the S^5 and their study is related to the above plane-wave limit.
The Plane-Wave/Super Yang-Mills Duality
by Darius Sadri, Mohammad M. Sheikh-Jabbari (hep-th/0310119, 91 pages, 7 figures)
Light-Cone String Field Theory in a Plane Wave Background
by Marcus Spradlin, Anastasia Volovich (hep-th/0310033, 46 pages, 4 figures)
Spradlin and Volovich review the plane-wave limit of AdS/CFT and describe how string field theory calculations of string interactions in 9+1 dimensional plane-wave spacetimes match interactions calculated using N=4 super Yang-Mills gauge theory in a 3+1 conformally flat spacetime. The paper includes
an elementary introduction to light-cone string field theory.
Quantum Mechanics, Random Matrices and BMN Gauge Theory
by C. Kristjansen (hep-th/0307204, 16 pages)
Strings in plane wave backgrounds
by A. Pankiewicz (hep-th/0307027, 85 pages)
This fairly detailed introduction to the plane-wave limit of AdS/CFT is based on Pankiewicz's Ph.D. thesis.
papers
Strings in flat space and pp waves from ${\cal N}=4$ Super Yang Mills
by David Berenstein, Juan Maldacena, Horatiu Nastase (hep-th/0202021, 36 pages, 5 figures)