The Subleading Term of the Strong Coupling Expansion of the Heavy-Quark Potential in a $\mathcal N=4$ Super Yang-Mills Plasma

TL;DR

This paper computes the sub-leading correction to the heavy-quark potential in a strongly coupled supersymmetric Yang-Mills plasma using AdS/CFT, involving numerical evaluation of functional determinants.

Contribution

It provides the first numerical calculation of the sub-leading term in the strong coupling expansion of the heavy-quark potential at finite temperature in ${ m f f N=4}$ SYM.

Findings

Numerical values for the sub-leading correction are obtained.

The correction refines the understanding of quark interactions at strong coupling.

Results are relevant for modeling quark-gluon plasma properties.

Abstract

Applying the AdS/CFT correspondence, the expansion of the heavy-quark potential of the ${\cal N}$ supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory at large $N_c$ is carried out to the sub-leading term in the large 't Hooft coupling at nonzero temperatures. 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 contributions of these determinants are evaluated numerically.