Cusped Wilson lines in symmetric representations

A bstract We study the cusped Wilson line operators and Bremsstrahlung functions associated to particles transforming in the rank- k symmetric representation of the gauge group U( N ) for N = 4 super Yang-Mills. We find the holographic D3-brane description for Wilson loops with internal cusps in two different limits: small cusp angle and k λ ≫ N . This allows for a non-trivial check of a conjectured relation between the Bremsstrahlung function and the expectation value of the 1/2 BPS circular loop in the case of a representation other than the fundamental. Moreover, we observe that in the limit of k ≫ N , the cusped Wilson line expectation value is simply given by the exponential of the 1-loop diagram. Using group theory arguments, this eikonal exponentiation is conjectured to take place for all Wilson loop operators in symmetric representations with large k , independently of the contour on which they are supported.