Confinement and screening via holographic Wilson loops

Abstract

We present the holographic dual to a family of $\mathcal{N}=1$ SCFTs in four dimensions, deformed by a VEV leading to a gapped system. We calculate Wilson loops in this system containing adjoint, bifundamental and fundamental matter. We calculate the quark-antiquark energy $E$ in terms of their separation $L$, finding an approximate analytic expression for $E(L)$. This expression shows the transition between conformal, confining and screened behaviours. Interesting phenomenology is discussed in a variety of examples. The tool used is the minimization of the F1 string action, for which the code used is made publicly available.

40 pages, various figures