Wilson Loops in Large {ital N} Field Theories

Journal Article · Mon Jun 01 04:00:00 EDT 1998 · Physical Review Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.80.4859· OSTI ID:679098

Maldacena, J ^[1]

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1. Lyman Laboratory of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138 (United States)

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 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory. The prescription involves calculating the area of a fundamental string world sheet in certain supergravity backgrounds. We also consider the case of coincident M -theory five-branes where one is led to calculating the area of M -theory two-branes. We briefly discuss the computation for (2+1) -dimensional supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory with 16 supercharges which is nonconformal. In all of these cases, we calculate the energy of a quark-antiquark pair. {copyright} {ital 1998} {ital The American Physical Society}

• DOE Contract Number: FG05-90ER40559
• OSTI ID: 679098
• Journal Information: Physical Review Letters, Journal Name: Physical Review Letters Journal Issue: 22 Vol. 80; ISSN 0031-9007; ISSN PRLTAO
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

66 PHYSICS
ENERGY
FOUR-DIMENSIONAL CALCULATIONS
QUANTUM FIELD THEORY
QUANTUM OPERATORS
QUARK-ANTIQUARK INTERACTIONS
SOLITONS
SUPERGRAVITY
SUPERSYMMETRY
WILSON LOOP
YANG-MILLS THEORY