Stability issues with baryons in AdS/CFT

We consider baryon vertices within the gauge/gravity correspondence for a class of curved backgrounds. The holographic description based on the N = 4 SYM theory for SU(N) allows classical solutions representing bound states of k-quarks with k less than or equal to N. We construct the corresponding classical configurations and perform a stability analysis. We present the details for the theory at the conformal point and at finite temperature and show that there is a critical value of k, below which there is instability. This may also arise when the baryon reaches a critical size. We also extend our treatment to magnetically charged baryon vertices.