A new approach to the study of effective string corrections in LGTs

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel method to analyze effective string corrections in lattice gauge theories by examining flux modifications, enabling precise measurement of higher-order corrections and revealing discrepancies with existing universality claims.

Contribution

It presents a new flux-based approach in abelian LGTs that isolates higher-order string corrections, providing more accurate measurements and challenging previous universality results.

Findings

Quartic correction matches Nambu-Goto predictions

Sextic correction differs from universality expectations

Method achieves high precision with efficient computation

Abstract

We propose a new approach to the study of the interquark potential in Lattice Gauge Theories. Instead of looking at the expectation value of Polyakov loop correlators we study the modifications induced in the chromoelectric flux by the presence of the Polyakov loops. In abelian LGTs, thanks to duality, this study can be performed in a very efficient way, allowing to reach high precision at a reasonable CPU cost. The major advantage of this strategy is that it allows to eliminate the dominant effective string correction to the interquark potential (the Luscher term) thus giving an unique opportunity to test higher order corrections. Performing a set of simulations in the 3d gauge Ising model we were thus able to precisely identify and measure both the quartic and the sextic effective string corrections to the interquark potential. While the quartic term perfectly agrees with the Nambu-Goto one the sextic term is definitely different. Our result seems to disagree with the recent proof of the universality of the sextic correction. We discuss a few possible explanations of this disagreement.