Related papers: Random walks of Wilson loops in the screening regi…
A phenomenological analysis of the distribution of Wilson loops in SU(2) Yang-Mills theory is presented in which Wilson loop distributions are described as the result of a diffusion process on the group manifold. It is shown that, in the…
We suggest that the gauge-invariant hedgehoglike structures in the Wilson loops are physically interesting degrees of freedom in the Yang--Mills theory. The trajectories of these ``hedgehog loops'' are closed curves corresponding to…
Linear confinement with Casimir scaling of the string tension in confining gauge theories is a consequence of a certain property of the Polyakov loop related to random matrices. This mechanism does not depend on the details of the theories…
The aim of this article is to study some asymptotics of a natural model of random ramified coverings on the disk of degree $N$. We prove that the monodromy field, called also the holonomy field, converges in probability to a non-random…
There are two distinct regimes of Yang-Mills theory where we can demonstrate confinement, the existence of a mass gap, and fractional theta angle dependence using a reliable semi-classical calculation. The two regimes are Yang-Mills theory…
This work is about pure Yang-Mills theory in four Euclidean dimensions with gauge group SU(N). We study rectangular smeared Wilson loops on the lattice at large N and relatively close to the large-N transition point in their eigenvalue…
By superposition of regular gauge instantons or merons, ensembles of gauge fields are constructed which describe the confining phase of SU(2) Yang-Mills theory. Various properties of the Wilson loops, the gluon condensate and the…
We apply a stochastic version of the geometric (Ricci) flow, complemented with the stochastic flow of the gauge Yang--Mills sector, in order to seed the chromo-magnetic and chromo-electric vortices that source the area-law for QCD…
We use the recently proposed supergravity approach to large $N$ gauge theories to calculate ordinary and spatial Wilson loops of gauge theories in various dimensions. In this framework we observe an area law for spatial Wilson loops in four…
Wilson loops provide the central gauge-invariant probe of confinement in lattice gauge theory. This survey reviews the statistical-mechanical formulation of lattice gauge ensembles, the strong-coupling and duality mechanisms behind area…
We analyze the Wilson loop for a pure Yang-Mills theory, using a decoupling solution in close agreement with lattice computations. At one-gluon exchange level it is seen that the potential cannot yield a linear rising contribution as…
The vortex picture of confinement is studied. The deconfinement phase transition is explained as a transition from a phase in which vortices percolate to a phase of small vortices. Lattice results are presented in support of this scenario.…
Quantum Yang-Mills theory and the Wilson loop can be rewritten identically in terms of local gauge-invariant variables being directly related to the metric of the dual space. In this formulation, one reveals a hidden high local symmetry of…
Based on the AdS/CFT correspondence, string theory has given exact predictions for circular Wilson loops in U(N) ${\cal N}=4$ supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory to all orders in a 1/N expansion. These Wilson loops can also be derived from…
The question of the role of the center of the gauge group in the phenomenon of confinement in Yang-Mills theory is addressed. The investigation is performed from the most general perspective of considering all possible choices for the gauge…
We consider the partially-deconfined saddle of large-$N$ pure Yang-Mills theory lying between confined and deconfined phases, in which the color degrees of freedom split into confined and deconfined sectors. Based on the microscopic…
Using the twisted partition function on R^3 x S^1, we argue that the deconfinement phase transition in pure Yang-Mills theory for all simple gauge groups is continuously connected to a quantum phase transition that can be studied in a…
The large-N limit of the expectation values of the Wilson loops corresponding to two-dimensional U(N) Yang-Mills and generalized Yang-Mills theories on a sphere are studied. The behavior of the expectation values of the Wilson loops both…
Distribution of loops in a one-dimensional random walk (RW), or, equivalently, neutral segments in a sequence of positive and negative charges is important for understanding the low energy states of randomly charged polymers. We investigate…
We discuss the effective action for Polyakov-Wilson loops winding around compact Euclidean time, which serve as order parameters for the finite temperature deconfinement transition in $SU(N)$ Yang-Mills gauge theory. We then apply our…