The subleading term of the strong coupling expansion of the heavy-quark potential in a N = 4 super Yang-Mills vacuum

Abstract

Applying the AdS/CFT correspondence, the expansion of the heavy-quark potential of = 4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory at large N c is carried out to the sub-leading term in the large 't Hooft coupling at zero temperature. The strong coupling corresponds to the semi-classical expansion of the string-sigma model, the gravity dual of the Wilson loop operator, with the sub-leading term expressed in terms of functional determinants of fluctuations. The singularities of these determinants are examined and their contributions are evaluated numerically. © SISSA 2009.