Flux-tube formation and holographic tunneling

We consider correlator of two concentric Wilson loops, a small and large ones related to the problem of flux-tube formation. There are three mechanisms which Call Contribute to the connected correlator and yield different dependences oil the radius of the small loop. The first one is quite standard and concerns exchange by supergravity modes. We also consider a novel mechanism when the flux-tube formation is described by a barrier transition in the string language, dual to the field-theoretic formulation of Yang-Mills theories. The most interesting possibility within this approach is resonant tunneling which Would enhance the correlator of the Wilson loops for particular geometries. The third possibility involves exchange by a dyonic string supplied with the string junction. We introduce also 't Hooft and composite dyonic loops as probes of the flux tube. Implications for lattice measurements are briefly discussed. (C) 2008 Published by Elsevier B.V.