On the Infrared Behavior of Landau Gauge Yang-Mills Theory with a Fundamentally Charged Scalar Field

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that the confinement mechanism observed in Landau gauge QCD for static quarks also applies to charged scalar fields, indicating a universal property of the gauge sector.

Contribution

It shows that scalar fields in the fundamental representation experience confinement via the same mechanism as quarks, simplifying analysis and enabling detailed studies.

Findings

Scalar fields exhibit linearly rising potential indicating confinement.

The confinement mechanism is universal across matter types in the gauge sector.

Simplified scalar systems are ideal for numerical and lattice studies of confinement.

Abstract

Recently it has been shown that infrared singularities of Landau gauge QCD can confine static quarks via a linearly rising potential. We show that the same mechanism can also provide a confining interaction between charged scalar fields in the fundamental representation. This confirms that within this scenario static confinement is a universal property of the gauge sector even though it is formally represented in the functional equations of the matter sector. The simplifications compared to the fermionic case make the scalar system an ideal laboratory for a detailed analysis of the confinement mechanism in numerical studies of the functional equations as well as in gauge-fixed lattice simulations.