  Lattice QCD indicates a large amount of entropy associated with the heavy
quark-antiquark pair immersed in the quark-gluon plasma. This entropy grows as
a function of the inter-quark distance giving rise to an entropic force that
can be very effective in dissociating the bound quarkonium states. In addition,
the lattice data show a very sharp peak in the heavy quark-antiquark entropy at
the deconfinement transition. Since the quark-gluon plasma around the
deconfinement transition is strongly coupled, we employ the holographic
correspondence to study the entropy associated with the heavy quark-antiquark
pair in two theories: i) ${\cal{N}}=4$ supersymmetric Yang-Mills and ii) a
confining Yang-Mills theory obtained by compactification on a Kaluza-Klein
circle. In both cases we find the entropy growing with the inter-quark distance
and evaluate the effect of the corresponding entropic forces. In the case ii),
we find a sharp peak in the entropy near the deconfinement transition, in
agreement with the lattice QCD results. This peak in our holographic
description arises because the heavy quark pair acts as an eyewitness of the
black hole formation in the bulk -- the process that describes the
deconfinement transition. In terms of the boundary theory, this entropy likely
emerges from the entanglement of a "long string" connecting the quark and
antiquark with the rest of the system.
