String Fluctuations, AdS/CFT and the Soft Pomeron Intercept

We study high energy scattering amplitudes in a strongly coupled (confining) gauge theory using the AdS/CFT correspondence. The scattering described by a Wilson line/loop correlation function was shown earlier to correspond to minimal surfaces of the helicoid type, and gave amplitudes with unit intercept and linear trajectory. In this paper we find the correction to the intercept from quadratic fluctuations of the string worldsheet around the helicoid. The relevant term comes from analytical continuation of a L\"uscher like term. It is coupling-constant independent and proportional to the number of effective transverse flat dimensions. The shift of the intercept, under our assumptions, is $n_\perp /96$, and for $n_\perp=7,8$ gives respectively 0.0729, 0.083. Incidentally we note that this is surprisingly close to the observed value of 0.08.