Holographic Wilson Loops

Abstract

We show that all half-BPS Wilson loop operators in N=4 SYM -- which are labeled by Young tableaus -- have a gravitational dual description in terms of D5-branes or alternatively in terms of D3-branes in AdS_5xS^5. We prove that the insertion of a half-BPS Wilson loop operator in the cal N=4 SYM path integral is achieved by integrating out the degrees of freedom on a configuration of bulk D5-branes or alternatively on a configuration of bulk D3-branes. The bulk D5-brane and D3-brane descriptions are related by bosonization.