Wilson-Polyakov loop at finite temperature in large-N gauge theory and anti-de Sitter supergravity

Aspects of d = 4, N = 4 superconformal U(N) gauge theory are studied at finite temperature. Utilizing dual description of large-N and strong coupling limit via Type IIB string theory compactification on Schwarzschild-anti-de Sitter space-time, we study correlations of Wilson-Polyakov loops and heavy quark potential thereof. We find that the heavy quark potential is Coulomb-like and has a finite range, as expected for gauge theory in high temperature, deconfinement phase. The potential exhibits finite temperature scaling consistent with underlying conformal invariance, We also study isolated heavy quark on a probe D3-brane world-volume and find supporting evidence that near extremal D3-branes are located at the Schwarzschild horizon, (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B,V.