Bottom-up holographic approach to QCD

One of the most known result of the string theory consists in the idea that some strongly coupled gauge theories may have a dual description in terms of a higher dimensional weakly coupled gravitational theory — the so-called AdS/CFT correspondence or gauge/gravity correspondence. The attempts to apply this idea to the real QCD are often referred to as "holographic QCD" or "AdS/QCD approach". One of directions in this field is to start from the real QCD and guess a tentative dual higher dimensional weakly coupled field model following the principles of gauge/gravity correspondence. The ensuing phenomenology can be then developed and compared with experimental data and with various theoretical results. Such a bottom-up holographic approach turned out to be unexpectedly successful in many cases. In the given short review, the technical aspects of the bottom-up holographic approach to QCD are explained placing the main emphasis on the soft wall model