Related papers: Center Vortices, Nexuses, and the Georgi-Glashow M…
The confining mechanisms of 't Hooft and Mandelstam have a simple microscopic realization in 3D Z2 gauge theory: the center vortex and the magnetic monopole condensation are associated, in the set of configurations contributing to the…
We propose to use the different kinds of vacua of the gauge theories coupled to matter as a laboratory to test confinement ideas of pure Yang-Mills theories. In particular, the very poor overlap of the Wilson loop with the broken string…
We further investigate center vortex percolation and Coulomb gauge remnant symmetry breaking in the SU(2) gauge-Higgs model. We show that string breaking is visible in Polyakov line correlators on the center projected lattice, that our…
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…
It is suggested that the center vortex confinement mechanism, familiar in hadronic physics, may have some relevance to high-T$_\text{c}$ phenomena. We focus specifically on the transition from the superconducting phase to the pseudogap…
We study the mechanism of confinement via formation of Abrikosov-Nielsen-Olesen vortices on the Higgs branch of N=2 supersymmetric SU(2) gauge theory with massive fundamental matter. Higgs branch represents a limiting case of superconductor…
SU(2) gluodynamics is investigated numerically and analytically in the (Indirect) Maximal Center gauge at finite temperature. The center vortices are shown to be condensed in the confinement phase and dilute in the deconfinement phase. A…
We show how the infinite color-Coulomb energy of color-charged states is related to enhanced density of near-zero modes of the Faddeev-Popov operator, and calculate this density numerically for both pure Yang-Mills and gauge-Higgs systems…
Smeared Abelian and center gauges are introduced in pure non-Abelian lattice gauge theories. Popular Abelian and center gauges are limits of smeared gauges. Smeared gauges are also shown to be equivalent to Higgs theories. As a result,…
Nonabelian magnetic monopoles of Goddard-Nuyts-Olive-Weinberg type have recently been shown to appear as the dominant infrared degrees of freedom in a class of softly broken ${\cal N}=2$ supersymmetric gauge theories in which the gauge…
We consider, from several complementary perspectives, the physics of confinement and deconfinement in the 2+1 dimensional Georgi-Glashow model. Polyakov's monopole plasma and 't Hooft's vortex condensation are discussed first. We then…
There has been substantial progress in understanding a class of SU(N) gauge theories that are confining at high temperatures. This class includes theories with center-symmetric Polyakov loop deformations or with periodic adjoint fermions.…
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…
In this paper we further explore the question of topological charge in the center vortex-nexus picture of gauge theories. Generally, this charge is locally fractionalized in units of 1/N for gauge group SU(N), but globally quantized in…
In gauge theories with an extended Higgs sector the classical equations of motion can have solutions that describe stable, closed finite energy vortices. Such vortices separate two disjoint Higgs vacua, with one of the vacua embedded in the…
We construct an anomaly-preserving compactification of 4d gauge theories, including $SU(N)$ Yang-Mills theory, $\mathcal{N}=1$ supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory, and QCD, down to 2d by turning on 't Hooft flux through $T^2$. It provides a…
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 compute, in SU(3) pure gauge theory, the vacuum expectation value (vev) of the operator which creates a $Z_3$ vortex wrapping the lattice through periodic boundary conditions (dual Polyakov line). The technique used is the same already…
There are three types of monopole in gauge theories with fundamental matter and N=2 supersymmetry broken by a superpotential. There are unconfined 0-monopoles and also 1 and 2-monopoles confined respectively by one or two vortices…
Vortices in the SU(2)--Higgs model: The presence of a fundamental Higgs in the SU(N)-Higgs model yields color screening at some finite distance. Whereas the transition to the Higgs "phase" is accompanied by a suppression of projected center…