Related papers: Center vortices and confinement vs. screening
Lattice simulations are presented showing the expectation of the fluctuation of the Wilson loop solely by elements of the center to fully reproduce the SU(3) heavy quark potential. The results are stable under smoothing, and point to thick…
We consider a class of 3d theories with a $\mathbb Z_n$ magnetic symmetry in which confinement is generated by charge $n$ clusters of monopoles. Such theories naturally arise in quantum antiferromagnets in 2+1, QCD-like theories on $\mathbb…
The confinement problem is studied using the thick center vortex model. It is shown that the $SU(3)$ Cartan sub algebra of the decomposed $G(2)$ gauge theory can play an important role in the confinement. The Casimir eigenvalues and ratios…
An approach to studying lattice gauge models in the weak coupling region is proposed. Conceptually, it is based on the crucial role of the original Z(N) symmetry and the invariant gauge group measure. As an example, we calculate an…
We study analytically and numerically the interaction potentials between a pair of quark an anti-quark on D3, M2 and M5 branes. These potentials are obtained using Maldacena's method involving Wilson loops and present confining and…
The vacuum of supersymmetric gauge theories (SQCD) with N=2 softly broken to N=1 resembles that of a BCS superconductor in that it has a condensate which collimates flux into vortices, leading to confinement. We embed the SQCD vortex into…
We propose new classes of $4d$ $\mathcal{N}\!=\!1$ S-confining gauge theories, with a simple gauge group, rank-two matter and cubic superpotentials. The gauge group can be symplectic, orthogonal or special unitary. In some cases we derive…
First, we give a gauge-independent definition of chromomagnetic monopoles in $SU(N)$ Yang-Mills theory which is derived through a non-Abelian Stokes theorem for the Wilson loop operator. Then we discuss how such magnetic monopoles can give…
The behavior of the adjoint Wilson line in finite-temperature, $SU(2)$, lattice gauge theory is discussed. The expectation value of the line and the associated excess free energy reveal the response of the finite-temperature gauge field to…
The 2+1 dimensional pure SU(N) gauge theories with N <= 4 are candidates for applying the powerful tools of scaling and universality to their deconfinement transitions at finite temperature. The corresponding 2 dimensional q-state Potts…
We generalize modern ideas about the duality between Wilson loops and scattering amplitudes in ${\cal N}=4$ SYM to large $N$ QCD by deriving a general relation between QCD meson scattering amplitudes and Wilson loops. We then investigate…
In a gauge theory with no Higgs fields the mechanism for confinement is by center vortices, but in theories with adjoint Higgs fields and generic symmetry breaking, such as the Georgi-Glashow model, Polyakov showed that in d=3 confinement…
It is very plausible that confinement in QCD comes from linking of Wilson loops to finite-thickness vortices with magnetic fluxes corresponding to the center of the gauge group. The vortices are solitons of a gauge-invariant QCD action…
We calculate the variation with temperature of the vortex free energy in D=2+1 SU(2) lattice gauge theories. We do so both above and below the deconfining transition at T=Tc. We find that this quantity is zero at all T for large enough…
In this paper we discuss the classical 3D XY model whose nearest-neighbor interaction is a mixture of $\cos(\theta_i-\theta_j)$ (ferromagnetic) and $\cos2(\theta_i-\theta_j)$ (nematic). This model is dual to a theory with integer and…
We argue that asymptotically linear static potential is built in into the common procedure of extracting it from lattice Wilson loop measurements. To illustrate the point, we extract the potential by the standard lattice method in a model…
We suggest that the transition that occurs at large $N_c$ in the eigenvalue distribution of a Wilson loop may have a turbulent origin. We arrived at this conclusion by studying the complex-valued inviscid Burgers-Hopf equation that…
We present simulation results comparing the SU(3) heavy quark potential extracted from the full Wilson loop expectation to that extracted from the expectation of the Wilson loop fluctuation solely by elements of Z(3). The two potentials are…
We analyze the phases of theories which only have a microscopic $\mathbb{Z}_N$ 1-form symmetry, starting with a topological BF theory and deforming it in accordance with microscopic symmetry. These theories have a well-defined notion of…
We study the role of percolating clusters of center vortices in configurations of an Ising gauge theory in 3D. It is known that low energy features of gauge theories can be described in terms of an ``effective string picture'', and that…