Multiply wound Polyakov loops at strong coupling

Abstract

We study the expectation value of a Polyakov-Maldacena loop that wraps the thermal circle k times in strongly coupled N=4 super Yang-Mills theory. This is achieved by considering probe D3 and D5 brane embeddings in the dual black hole geometry. In contrast to multiply wound spatial Wilson loops, nontrivial dependence on k is captured through D5 branes. We find N^{-2/3} corrections, reminiscent of the scaling behaviour near a Gross-Witten transition.