Wilson loops in large N field theories

Mar, 1998
11 pages
Published in:
  • Phys.Rev.Lett. 80 (1998) 4859-4862
e-Print:
Report number:
  • HUTP-98-A014

Citations per year

19982005201220192025020406080100
Abstract:
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 dimensional super-Yang-Mills with sixteen supercharges which is non-conformal. In all these cases we calculate the energy of quark-antiquark pair.
Note:
  • 12 pages, harvmac. v2: sign in eqn. (5.6) corrected, v3 typo corrected
  • gauge field theory: U(N)
  • fermion
  • Wilson loop
  • quark antiquark: potential
  • supergravity
  • M-theory
  • membrane model