What are the Confining Field Configurations of Strong-Coupling Lattice Gauge Theory?

TL;DR

This paper derives an effective action for strong-coupling SU(2) lattice gauge theory in three dimensions, showing that stable center vortices percolate and confine color charge beyond a certain scale, challenging previous beliefs.

Contribution

It introduces a semi-local effective action revealing stable center vortices as confining agents in strong-coupling lattice gauge theory, linking vortex stability to color screening.

Findings

Center vortices are stable saddlepoints for L ≥ 5.

Vortices percolate and confine color charge.

Contradicts the idea that confinement is due solely to plaquette disorder.

Abstract

Starting from the strong-coupling SU(2) Wilson action in D=3 dimensions, we derive an effective, semi-local action on a lattice of spacing L times the spacing of the original lattice. It is shown that beyond the adjoint color-screening distance, i.e. for $L \ge 5$, thin center vortices are stable saddlepoints of the corresponding effective action. Since the entropy of these stable objects exceeds their energy, center vortices percolate throughout the lattice, and confine color charge in half-integer representations of the SU(2) gauge group. This result contradicts the folklore that confinement in strong-coupling lattice gauge theory, for D>2 dimensions, is simply due to plaquette disorder, as is the case in D=2 dimensions. It also demonstrates explicitly how the emergence and stability of center vortices is related to the existence of color screening by gluon fields.