SU(3) centre vortices underpin confinement and dynamical chiral symmetry breaking

Abstract

The mass function of the nonperturbative quark propagator in SU(3) gauge theory shows only a weak dependence on the vortex content of the gauge configurations. Of particular note is the survival of dynamical mass generation on vortex-free configurations having a vanishing string tension. This admits the possibility that mass generation associated with dynamical chiral symmetry breaking persists without confinement. In this presentation, we examine the low-lying ground-state hadron spectrum of the pi, rho, N and Delta and discover that while dynamical mass generation persists in the vortex-free theory, it is not connected to dynamical chiral symmetry breaking. In this way, centre vortices in SU(3) gauge theory are intimately linked to both confinement and dynamical chiral symmetry breaking. We conclude that centre vortices are the essential underlying feature of the QCD vacuum.

7 pages, 8 figues. Manuscript accepted for Publication in Phys. Rev. D

References in corpus (2)

• Role of center vortices in chiral symmetry breaking in SU(3) gauge theory
• Center vortices and the quark propagator in SU(2) gauge theory

Cited by in corpus (21)

• QCD Running Couplings and Effective Charges
• Center Vortices and Chiral Symmetry Breaking in SU(2) Lattice Gauge Theory
• Visualisation of Centre Vortex Structure
• Connection between centre vortices and instantons through gauge-field smoothing
• Gluon propagator on a centre-vortex background
• Centre vortex removal restores chiral symmetry
• Branching of Center Vortices in SU(3) Lattice Gauge Theory
• Probing center vortices and deconfinement in $\mathrm{SU}(2)$ lattice gauge theory with persistent homology
• Centre vortex structure in the presence of dynamical fermions
• Confining Bond Rearrangement in the Random Center Vortex Model
• Centre vortex geometry at finite temperature
• Instanton contributions to the low-lying hadron mass spectrum
• Numerical indication that center vortices drive dynamical mass generation in QCD
• The Charm and Beauty of Strong Interactions
• Smoothing algorithms for projected center-vortex gauge fields
• Center vortices and the $\mathrm{SU}(3)$ conformal window
• Study of the Emergence of a Gluon Mass Scale from Center Vortices Using a Wave-Functional Formalism
• Structure of center-vortex matter in SU(4) Yang-Mills theory
• Understanding the structure of nucleon excitations from their wavefunctions
• Center vortices in the novel phase of staggered fermions
• Novel insight into centre-vortex geometry in four dimensions