The Confining Flux Tube in AdS

Abstract: We recently initiated the study of flux tubes in confining gauge theories placed in a rigid Andi-de Sitter (AdS) background, which serves as an infrared regulator. This setup provides a controlled arena to probe a central question in confinement: how the effective string worldsheet degrees of freedom emerge from the underlying UV gauge theory. Varying the AdS radius from large to small interpolates between a flat-space confining string and a weakly coupled string-like object bound by the AdS gravitational potential. In practice, the flux tube is realized as a Wilson loop inserted at the AdS boundary. In this talk, I will explain what we have learned so far about this setup.