Remarks on the Heavy Quark Potential in the Supergravity Approach

We point out certain unexpected features of the planar QCD3 confining potential, as computed from a classical worldsheet action in an AdS metric via the Maldacena conjecture. We show that there is no Luscher c/R term in the static-quark potential, which is contrary to both the prediction of various effective string models, and the results of some recent lattice Monte Carlo studies. It is also noted that the glueball masses extracted from classical supergravity tend to finite, coupling-independent constants in the strong coupling limit, even as the string tension tends to infinity in the same limit; this is a counter-intuitive result.