Evaluation of glueball masses from supergravity

In the framework of the conjectured duality relation between large N gauge theory and supergravity the spectra of masses in large N gauge theory can be determined by solving certain eigenvalue problems in supergravity. In this paper we study the eigenmass problem given by Witten as a possible approximation for masses in QCD without supersymmetry. We place a particular emphasis on the treatment of the horizon and related boundary conditions. We construct exact expressions for the analytic expansions of the wave functions both at the horizon and at infinity and show that requiring smoothness at the horizon and normalizability gives a well defined eigenvalue problem. We show, for example, that there are no smooth solutions with a vanishing derivative at the horizon. The mass eigenvalues up to m^2=1000 corresponding to smooth normalizable wave functions are presented. We comment on the relation of our work with the results found in a recent paper by C. Cs\'aki et al. , hep-th/9806021, which addresses the same problem.