Diagonal deformations of thin center vortices and their stability in Yang-Mills theories

Abstract

The importance of center vortices for the understanding of the confining properties of SU(N) Yang-Mills theories is well established in the lattice. However, in the continuum, there is a problem concerning the relevance of center vortex backgrounds. They display the so called Savvidy-Nielsen-Olesen instability, associated with a gyromagnetic ratio $g_m^{(b)}=2$ for the off-diagonal gluons. In this work, we initially consider the usual definition of a {\it thin} center vortex and rewrite it in terms of a local color frame in SU(N) Yang-Mills theories. Then, we define a thick center vortex as a diagonal deformation of the thin object. Besides the usual thick background profile, this deformation also contains a frame defect coupled with gyromagnetic ratio $g_m^{(d)}=1$, originated from the charged sector. As a consequence, the analysis of stability is modified. In particular, we point out that the defect should stabilize a vortex configuration formed by a pair of straight components separated by an appropriate finite distance.

20 pages, LaTeX

References in corpus (3)

• Center vortices as sources of Abelian dominance in pure SU(2) Yang-Mills theory
• QCD effective action with a most general homogeneous field background
• Stable Monopole-Antimonopole String Background in SU(2) QCD

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• Derivation of an Abelian effective model for instanton chains in 3D Yang-Mills theory
• Exploring center vortices in SU(2) and SU(3) relativistic Yang-Mills-Higgs models
• Detection of monopoles and vortices in SU(2) Yang-Mills theory
• Monopoles, vortices and their correlations in SU(3) gauge group