RG flow, Wilson loops and the dilaton tadpole

We discuss the role of the dilaton tadpole in the holographic description of non-supersymmetric gauge theories that are conformal in the planar limit. On the string theory side, the presence of the dilaton tadpole modifies the AdS background inducing a logarithmic running for the radius and the dilaton. Using the holographic prescription we compute the Wilson loop on the gravity side and find a smooth interpolating potential between asymptotic freedom and confinement, as expected from field theory.