Supersymmetric Wilson loops Original Research Article

I construct 1/16,1/8 and 1/4 BPS Wilson loops in N=4 supersymmetric Yang–Mills theory and argue that expectation values of 1/4 BPS loops do not receive quantum corrections. At strong coupling, non-renormalization of supersymmetric Wilson loops implies subtle cancellations in the partition function of the AdS string with special boundary conditions. The cancellations are shown to occur in the semiclassical approximation.