QCD condensates and holographic Wilson loops for asymptotically AdS spaces

Abstract

The minimization of the Nambu-Goto action for a surface whose contour defines a circular Wilson loop of radius a placed at a finite value of the coordinate orthogonal to the boundary is considered. This is done for asymptotically anti-de Sitter (AdS) spaces. The condensates of even dimension n=2 through 10 are calculated in terms of the coefficient of an in the expansion of the on-shell subtracted Nambu-Goto action for small a. The subtraction employed is such that it presents no conflict with conformal invariance in the AdS case and need not introduce an additional infrared scale for the case of confining geometries. It is shown that the UV value of the condensates is universal in the sense that they only depend on the first coefficients of the difference with the AdS case.