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A<sc>bstract</sc> Motivated by the long-term goal of finding holographic descriptions for$$ \mathcal{N} $$ $N$= 1 and$$ \mathcal{N} $$ $N$= 2 super QCD, we revisit the subject of “noncritical” superstring theory. Focusing on string models with 6d super Poincaré invariance, we provide a careful worldsheet derivation of the leading-order effective theories for the lowest modes. We identify them asseven-dimensional,maximally supersymmetricgauged supergravities: the SO(4) theory for noncritical IIA and the ISO(4) theory for noncritical IIB. The same theories also arise as consistent truncations onS³of the 10d IIB and IIA supergravities, respectively, where the chirality flip is as expected from T-duality. These effective supergravities should be interpreted in the following sense. The noncritical string can be viewed as a special case of a discrete series of backgrounds labelled by an integerk(which counts the number of NS5 branes in a certain duality frame); the “noncritical” value isk= 2, while fork→ ∞ one recovers a weakly-curved 10d target space. The effective supergravities described here give an accurate description of the interactions among the lowest modes fork→ ∞, with higher derivative corrections suppressed by powers of 1/k. We discuss BPS solutions of the 7d gauged supergravities and their uplift to 10d solutions. In particular, we find a novel class of solutions with RR flux, parametrized by a function of three variables that solves an elegant PDE. While we cannot solve the PDE in closed form except in trivial cases, we confirm that our solutions correspond to a 10d IIA Hanany-Witten setup with continuous distributions of both “color” D4 branes and “flavor” D6 branes. 

One of the few cases of AdS/CFT where both sides of the duality are under good control relates tensionlessk= 1 strings on AdS₃to a two-dimensional symmetric product CFT. Building on prior observations, we propose an exact duality between string theory on a spacetime which is not asymptotically AdS and a non-conformal field theory. The bulk theory is constructed as a marginal deformation of thek= 1 AdS₃string while the spacetime dual is a single trace$$ T\overline{T} $$ $T\overline{T}$-deformed symmetric orbifold theory. As evidence for the duality, we match the one-loop bulk and boundary torus partition functions. This correspondence provides a framework to both learn about quantum gravity beyond AdS and understand how to define physical observables in$$ T\overline{T} $$ $T\overline{T}$-deformed field theories.