Wilson-Polyakov surfaces and M-theory branes

Abstract

In this paper, we study the M-brane description of the Wilson-Polyakov surfaces in six-dimensional (2, 0) field theory at finite temperature. We investigate the membrane solution dual to a straight Wilons-Polyakov surface and compute the interaction potential between two parallel straight strings by using AdS/CFT correspondence. Furthermore we discuss the M5-brane solutions dual to various Wilson-Polyakov surfaces. Finally we obtain an universal result about M5-brane solutions in generic backgrounds.