  Within the AdS/CFT correspondence we use multicentre D3-brane metrics to
investigate Wilson loops and compute the associated heavy quark-antiquark
potentials for the strongly coupled SU(N) super-Yang-Mills gauge theory, when
the gauge symmetry is broken by the expectation values of the scalar fields.
For the case of a uniform distribution of D3-branes over a disc, we find that
there exists a maximum separation beyond which there is no force between the
quark and the antiquark, i.e. the screening is complete. We associate this
phenomenon with the possible existence of a mass gap in the strongly coupled
gauge theory. In the finite-temperature case, when the corresponding
supergravity solution is a rotating D3-brane solution, there is a class of
potentials interpolating between a Coulombic and a confining behaviour.
However, above a certain critical value of the mass parameter, the potentials
exhibit a behaviour characteristic of statistical systems undergoing phase
transitions. The physical path preserves the concavity property of the
potential and minimizes the energy. Using the same rotating-brane solutions, we
also compute spatial Wilson loops, associated with the quark-antiquark
potential in models of three-dimensional gauge theories at zero temperature,
with similar results.
