Two universal results for Wilson loops at strong coupling

In this paper we study Wilson loops in various representations for finite and large values of the color gauge group for supersymmetric ${\cal N}=4$ gauge theories. We also compute correlators of Wilson loops in different representations and perform a check with the dual gravitational theory.

Wilson loops are calculated within the AdS/CFT correspondence by finding a classical solution to the string equations of motion in AdS_5 x S^5 and evaluating its action. An important fact is that this sigma-model used to evaluate the Wilson loops is integrable, a feature that has gained relevance through the study of spinning strings carrying large quantum numbers and spin-chains. We apply the same techniques used to solve the equations for spinning strings to find the minima...

We consider circular non-BPS Maldacena-Wilson loops in five-dimensional supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory (d = 5 SYM) both as macroscopic strings in the D4-brane geometry and directly in gauge theory. We find that in the Dp-brane geometries for increasing p, p = 4 is the last value for which the radius of the string worldsheet describing the Wilson loop is independent of the UV cut-off. It is also the last value for which the area of the worldsheet can be (at least partially) ...

We construct the D3-brane solution in the holographic dual of the N = 2* theory that describes Wilson lines in symmetric representations of the gauge group. The results perfectly agree with the direct field-theory predictions based on localization.

We consider 1/2-BPS circular Wilson loops in a class of 5d superconformal field theories on S^5. The large N limit of the vacuum expectation values of Wilson loops are computed both by localization in the field theory and by evaluating the fundamental string and D4-brane actions in the dual massive IIA supergravity background. We find agreement in the leading large N limit for a rather general class of representations, including fundamental, anti-symmetric and symmetric repre...

We propose a method to calculate the expectation values of an operator similar to the Wilson loop in the large N limit of field theories. We consider N=4 3+1 dimensional super-Yang-Mills. The prescription involves calculating the area of a fundamental string worldsheet in certain supergravity backgrounds. We also consider the case of coincident M-theory fivebranes where one is lead to calculating the area of M-theory two-branes. We briefly discuss the computation for 2+1 dime...

Talk presented at Strings '99 in Potsdam, Germany (July 19 - 24, 1999).

In hep-th/9803002, Maldacena argued that in the light of the AdS/CFT correspondence as formulated by Witten and Gubser, Klebanov and Polyakov as a relation between partition functions, the expectation value of the Wilson loop in $\cal N$=4 SU(N) SYM is given by the worldsheet partition function with the action formulated on an $AdS_5\times S^5$ background and the world sheet ending on the loop on the boundary of $AdS_5$. What we propose to do in this paper is to provide some ...

In this note we study supersymmetric Wilson loops restricted to an S^2 submanifold of four-dimensional space in N=4 super Yang-Mills. We provide evidence from both perturbation theory and the AdS dual that those loops are equal to the analogous observables in two-dimensional Yang-Mills on S^2 (excluding non-perturbative contributions). This relates a subsector of N=4 SYM to a low-dimensional soluble model and also suggests that this subsector of N =4 SYM is invariant under ar...

In this thesis, we investigate hidden symmetries for the Maldacena-Wilson loop in N=4 super Yang-Mills theory, mainly focusing on its strong-coupling description as a minimal surface in $AdS_5$. In the discussion of the symmetry structure of the underlying string model, we highlight the role of the master symmetry which can be employed to construct all symmetries of the model. The algebra of these symmetries is worked out. For the concrete case of minimal surfaces in $AdS_5$,...