On Confinement Index

Abstract

The smallest integer t for which the Wilson loop W^{t} fails to exhibit area law is known as the confinement index of a given field theory. The confinement index provides us with subtle information on the vacuum properties of the system. We study the behavior of the Wilson and 't Hooft loops and compute the confinement index in a wide class of N=1 supersymmetric gauge theories. All possible electric and magnetic screenings are taken into account. The results found are consistent with the theta periodicity, and whenever such a check is available, with the factorization property of Seiberg-Witten curves.

29 pages

References in corpus (4)

• A Perturbative Window into Non-Perturbative Physics
• N=1 and N=2 Geometry from Fluxes
• Notes on supersymmetric Sp(N) theories with an antisymmetric tensor
• Millenial Messages for QCD from the Superworld and from the String

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Reading between the lines of four-dimensional gauge theories
• Liberating Confinement from Lagrangians: 1-form Symmetries and Lines in 4d N=1 from 6d N=(2,0)
• Nonabelian Faddeev-Niemi Decomposition of the SU(3) Yang-Mills Theory
• Confining vacua in SQCD, the Konishi anomaly and the Dijkgraaf-Vafa superpotential
• Confinement and duality in supersymmetric gauge theories