Short distance properties of cascading gauge theories

We study the short distance (large momentum) properties of correlation functions of cascading gauge theories by performing a tree-level computation in their dual gravitational background. We prove that these theories are holographically renormalizable; the correlators have only analytic ultraviolet divergences, which may be removed by appropriate local counterterms. We find that n-point correlation functions of properly normalized operators have the expected scaling in the semi-classical gravity (large N) limit: they scale as N_eff^2-n with N_eff ∝ ln(k/Λ) where k is a typical momentum. Our analysis thus confirms the interpretation of the cascading gauge theories as renormalizable four-dimensional quantum field theories with an effective number of degrees of freedom which logarithmically increases with the energy.