Nexus solitons in the center vortex picture of QCD

Abstract

It is very plausible that confinement in QCD comes from linking of Wilson loops to finite-thickness vortices with magnetic fluxes corresponding to the center of the gauge group. The vortices are solitons of a gauge-invariant QCD action representing the generation of gluon mass. There are a number of other solitonic states of this action. We discuss here what we call nexus solitons, in which for gauge group SU(N), up to N vortices meet a a center, or nexus, provided that the total flux of the vortices adds to zero (mod N). There are fundamentally two kinds of nexuses: Quasi-Abelian, which can be described as composites of Abelian imbedded monopoles, whose Dirac strings are cancelled by the flux condition; and fully non-Abelian, resembling a deformed sphaleron. Analytic solutions are available for the quasi-Abelian case, and we discuss variational estimates of the action of the fully non-Abelian nexus solitons in SU(2). The non-Abelian nexuses carry Chern-Simons number (or topological charge in four dimensions). Their presence does not change the fundamentals of confinement in the center-vortex picture, but they may lead to a modified picture of the QCD vacuum.

LateX, 24 pages, 2 .eps figures

References in corpus (5)

• Casimir Scaling from Center Vortices: Towards an Understanding of the Adjoint String Tension
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Cited by in corpus (24)

• Center Projection Vortices in Continuum Yang-Mills Theory
• Quark confinement: dual superconductor picture based on a non-Abelian Stokes theorem and reformulations of Yang-Mills theory
• Center vortex model for the infrared sector of Yang-Mills theory - Topological Susceptibility
• Center Vortices, Nexuses, and the Georgi-Glashow Model
• Topological Susceptibility of Yang-Mills Center Projection Vortices
• Center Vortices, Nexuses, and Fractional Topological Charge
• Monopole, half-quantum vortices and nexus in chiral superfluids and superconductors
• P-vortices, nexuses and effects of gauge copies
• Center vortex model for the infrared sector of SU(3) Yang-Mills theory: Topological susceptibility
• Manifestations of magnetic vortices in equation of state of Yang-Mills plasma
• On topological charge carried by nexuses and center vortices
• Magnetic monopoles and center vortices as gauge-invariant topological defects simultaneously responsible for confinement
• Mirror Symmetry of quantum Yang-Mills vacua and cosmological implications
• Monopoles and vortices in Yang-Mills plasma
• Baryonic hybrids: Gluons as beads on strings between quarks
• Magnetic Monopole Loops supported by a Meron pair as the Quark Confiner
• Sphalerons, knots, and dynamical compactification in Yang-Mills-Chern-Simon theories
• 't Hooft-Polyakov monopoles in lattice SU(N)+adjoint Higgs theory
• Center vortex model for the infrared sector of SU(4) Yang-Mills theory: String tensions and deconfinement transition
• Correlations between Abelian Monopoles and center vortices
• Center vortices as composites of monopole fluxes
• A three-dimensional scalar field theory model of center vortices and its relation to k-string tensions
• String tensions and deconfinement transition in the SU(4) center vortex model
• Monopole-center vortex chains in $SU(2)$ gauge theory