Holographic Wilson Loops

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 AdS5×S. We prove that the insertion of a half-BPS Wilson loop operator in the 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. 4/2006 1 [email protected] 2 [email protected]