Wilson loops in holographic models with a gluon condensate

TL;DR

This paper investigates the holographic dual of gauge theories with a gluon condensate, analyzing Wilson loops and phase transitions to understand nonperturbative effects in the gauge/gravity correspondence.

Contribution

It introduces a consistent holographic description of the gluon condensate and explores its impact on Wilson loop expectation values and phase transition behaviors.

Findings

The gluon condensate affects the expectation value of small Wilson loops.

The phase transition order in Wilson loop correlators changes at a critical loop size.

A new effect of the gluon condensate on Wilson loop phase transitions is identified.

Abstract

The aim of this work is to study the holographic dual to the gauge theory with a nonzero gluon condensate. We check for consistency the holographic way of describing the condensate and calculate the expectation value of a small Wilson loop in the presence of the gluon condensate, thus obtaining the relevant coefficient in the operator product expansion of the small loop in different holographic models. We also study the effect of the condensate on the Gross-Ooguri phase transition in the correlator of two circular Wilson loops in parallel and concentric configurations. In the numerical study of the concentric case, we find that the phase transition changes its order when the size of the loops is of order of the gluon condensate. We report this change of the phase transition order to be a new effect in Wilson loop correlators.