String breaking in QCD: dual superconductor vs. stochastic vacuum model

TL;DR

This paper investigates how chromoelectric field dispersion affects the string-breaking distance in QCD, comparing dual superconductor and stochastic vacuum models, and explores temperature effects near the critical point.

Contribution

It introduces a new analysis of string-breaking distance corrections considering all orders and proposes an alternative formula based on the hole model in the confining pellicle.

Findings

Dispersion effects slightly reduce the string-breaking distance from the Schwinger formula.

Accounting for all-order corrections can increase the string-breaking distance significantly.

Generalizations to finite temperature regimes are discussed.

Abstract

Effects of dispersion of the chromoelectric field of the flux tube on the string-breaking distance are studied. The leading-order correction is shown to slightly diminish the result following from the Schwinger formula. Instead, accounting for corrections of all orders might result, at certain values of the Landau-Ginzburg parameter, in an increase of the string-breaking distance up to one order of magnitude. An alternative formula for this distance is obtained when produced pairs are treated as holes in a confining pellicle, which spans over the contour of an external quark-antiquark pair. Generalizations of the obtained results to the cases of small temperatures, as well as temperatures close to the critical one are also discussed.