Hot Giant Loop Holography

Abstract

We argue that there is a phase transition in the expectation value of the Polyakov loop operator in the large N limit of the high temperature deconfined phase of N=4 Yang-Mills theory on a spatial S^3. It occurs for large completely symmetric representation of the SU(N) symmetry group. We speculate that this transition is reflected in the string theory dual as a critical behavior of the D3-brane duals of large representation loops.

4 pages, 1 figure, final section updated