SU(3) centre vortices underpin confinement and dynamical chiral symmetry breaking

TL;DR

This study investigates the role of SU(3) centre vortices in QCD, revealing they are crucial for confinement and chiral symmetry breaking, but mass generation can persist without confinement.

Contribution

It demonstrates that centre vortices are fundamental to both confinement and chiral symmetry breaking in SU(3) gauge theory, clarifying their distinct roles.

Findings

Dynamical mass generation persists without confinement.

Centre vortices are essential for both confinement and chiral symmetry breaking.

Mass generation can occur independently of confinement.

Abstract

The mass function of the nonperturbative quark propagator in SU(3) gauge theory shows only a weak dependence on the vortex content of the gauge configurations. Of particular note is the survival of dynamical mass generation on vortex-free configurations having a vanishing string tension. This admits the possibility that mass generation associated with dynamical chiral symmetry breaking persists without confinement. In this presentation, we examine the low-lying ground-state hadron spectrum of the pi, rho, N and Delta and discover that while dynamical mass generation persists in the vortex-free theory, it is not connected to dynamical chiral symmetry breaking. In this way, centre vortices in SU(3) gauge theory are intimately linked to both confinement and dynamical chiral symmetry breaking. We conclude that centre vortices are the essential underlying feature of the QCD vacuum.