Bartz, Sean Peter2014-10-172014-10-172014-08https://hdl.handle.net/11299/166930University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. August 2014. Major: Physics. Advisor: Joseph I. Kapusta. 1 computer file (PDF); ix,110 pages.Gauge/gravity dualities are tools that allow for the analytic study of strongly- coupled gauge theories. The Anti-de Sitter Space/Conformal Field Theory conjecture posits a duality between ten-dimensional string theory and a super Yang-Mills theory. A phenomenologically-motivated modification of this correspondence is known as AdS/QCD, a proposed duality between strongly-coupled QCD-like theories and weakly- coupled gravitational theories in an additional dimension. QCD is not scale-invariant, so the dual theory must be modified in the conformal dimension to reflect this.This thesis examines soft-wall models of AdS/QCD, wherein the conformal symmetry is broken by a field known as a dilaton. The dynamics of the dilaton and other background fields are examined, and a potential for these fields is determined. The back- ground fields are numerically derived from this potential and used in the calculation of meson spectra, which match experiment well.enAdS/CFTGauge/gravity dualityHolographyMesonsPhysicsThesis or Dissertation