Heavy quark potential at finite temperature from gauge-string duality

A static string in an AdS Schwarzschild space is dual to a heavy quark-antiquark pair in a gauge theory at high temperature. This space is nonconfining in the sense that the energy is finite for infinite quark-antiquark separation. We introduce an infrared cutoff 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-antiquark 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.