Heavy quark potential at finite temperature from gauge/string duality

TL;DR

This paper models the heavy quark potential at finite temperature using gauge/string duality, revealing a deconfining phase transition and behavior consistent with known phenomenology, but with limitations at low temperatures.

Contribution

It introduces an infrared cutoff in the AdS Schwarzschild space to study the deconfining transition and reproduces key features of the quark potential at finite temperature.

Findings

Identifies a critical temperature T_C for deconfinement.

Shows linear confinement below T_C.

Demonstrates vanishing string tension above T_C.

Abstract

A static string in an AdS Schwarzschild space is dual to a heavy quark anti-quark pair in a gauge theory at high temperature. This space is non confining in the sense that the energy is finite for infinite quark anti-quark separation. We introduce an infrared cut off in this space and calculate the corresponding string energy. We find a deconfining phase transition at a critical temperature T_C. Above T_C the string tension vanishes representing the deconfined phase. Below T_C we find a linear confining behavior for large quark anti-quark separation. This simple phenomenological model leads to the appropriate zero temperature limit, corresponding to the Cornell potential and also describes a thermal deconfining phase transition. However the temperature corrections to the string tension do not recover the expected results for low temperatures.