Brane-Inspired Orientifold Field Theories

In this paper we consider the gauge theory living on the world-volume of a stack of N D3-branes of type 0B/Ω'I₆(-1)^F_L and of its orbifolds C²/Bbb Z₂ and C³/(Bbb Z₂ × Bbb Z₂). The gauge theories obtained in the three cases are a brane realization of ``orientifold field theories'' having the bosonic sector common with Script N = 4,2,1 super Yang-Mills respectively. In these non-supersymmetric theories, we investigate the possibility of keeping the gauge/gravity correspondence that has revealed itself so successful in the case of supersymmetric theories. In the open string framework we compute the coefficient of the gauge kinetic term showing that the perturbative behaviour of the orientifold field theory can be obtained from the closed string channel in the large N limit, where the theory exhibits Bose-Fermi degeneracy.