RG flow, Wilson loops and the dilaton tadpole

We discuss the role of the dilaton tadpole in the holographic description o f non-supersymmetric gauge theories that are conformal in the planar limit. On the string theory side, the presence of the dilaton tadpole modifies th e AdS background inducing a logarithmic running and the radius and the dila tion. Using the holographic prescription we compute the Wilson loop on the gravity side and find a smooth interpolating potential between asymptotic f reedom and confinement, as expected from field theory. (C) 2000 Elsevier Sc ience B.V. All rights reserved.