Investigating the flux tube structure within full QCD

TL;DR

This paper presents lattice QCD measurements of the chromoelectric flux tube structure between static quark-antiquark pairs, providing insights into quark confinement and flux tube behavior at various distances.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed lattice measurements of flux tube profiles in full QCD with (2+1) HISQ flavors across different quark-antiquark separations.

Findings

Flux tube profiles observed at multiple distances.

Evidence of flux tube widening with increasing separation.

Data approaching string breaking distance.

Abstract

A characteristic signature of quark confinement is the concentration of the chromoelectric field between a static quark-antiquark pair in a flux tube. Here we report on lattice measurements of field distributions on smeared Monte Carlo ensembles in QCD with (2+1) HISQ flavors. We measure the field distributions for several distances between static quark-antiquark sources, ranging from 0.6 fm up to the distance where the color string is expected to break.