Dilatonic repulsons and confinement via the AdS/CFT correspondence

We study a class of dilatonic deformations of asymptotically [Formula Presented] geometry analytically and numerically. The spacetime is nonsupersymmetric and suffers from a naked singularity. We propose that the causality bound may serve as a criterion for such a geometry with a naked singularity to still make sense in the AdS/CFT correspondence. We show that the static string, the one corresponding to a large Wilson loop in the dual gauge theory, reveals confinement in a certain range of parameters of our solutions, where the singularity exhibits the repulsion that can well cloak the singularity from the static string probe. In particular, we find the exact expression for the tension of the QCD strings. We also discuss a possible interpretation of our solution in terms of unstable branes and their tachyon matter.