Topology of Center Vortices

Abstract

In this talk I study the topology of mathematically idealised center vortices, defined in a gauge invariant way as closed (infinitely thin) flux surfaces (in D=4 dimensions) which contribute the $n^{th}$ power of a non-trivial center element to Wilson loops when they are n-foldly linked to the latter. In ordinary 3-space generic center vortices represent closed magnetic flux loops which evolve in time. I show that the topological charge of such a time-dependent vortex loop can be entirely expressed by the temporal changes of its writhing number.

9 pages, 4 figures, Latex2e, Talk given at the NATO workshop on ``Confinement, Topology, and other Non-Perturbative Aspects of QCD'', Stara Lesna, Slovakia, January 21-27, 2000

Cited by in corpus (2)

• 3D Yang-Mills confining properties from a non-Abelian ensemble perspective
• Large Dual Transformations and the Petrov-Diakonov Representation of the Wilson Loop