Vortices and the SU(3) string tension

Abstract

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 found to coincide. This agreement is stable under multiple smoothings of the configurations which remove short distance fluctuations, and thus reflects long-distance physics. It strongly indicates that the asymptotic string tension arises from thick center vortices linking with the Wilson loop.

8 pages, LaTeX file with 6 eps figures

References in corpus (2)

• Vortices and confinement at weak coupling
• Interaction of confining vortices in SU(2) lattice gauge theory

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Deconfinement in SU(2) Yang-Mills theory as a center vortex percolation transition
• Exceptional Deconfinement in G(2) Gauge Theory
• Center Vortices, Nexuses, and Fractional Topological Charge
• On P-vortices and the Gribov problem
• Absence of confinement in the absence of vortices
• Vortices in SO(3)xZ(2) simulations
• Gauge invariant Z_2 vortex vacuum textures and the SU(2) gluon condensate