Correlations between Quarks, Monopoles and Instantons

TL;DR

This paper investigates how topological objects like instantons and monopoles behave around static quarks in pure QCD, revealing their suppression near sources and potential correlations that contribute to flux tube formation.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis of the spatial distributions and correlations of instantons and monopoles around static sources in lattice QCD.

Findings

Suppression of instanton and monopole densities near static sources

Formation of flux tubes between quark-antiquark pairs

Approximate correlation of topological quantities within two lattice spacings

Abstract

We analyze topological objects in pure QCD in the presence of external quarks by calculating the distributions of instanton and monopole densities around static color sources. We find a suppression of the densities close to external sources and the formation of a flux tube between a static quark--antiquark pair. The similarity in the behavior of instantons and monopoles around static sources might be due to a local correlation between these topological objects. On an $8^{3} \times 4$ lattice at $\beta=5.6$, it turns out that topological quantities are correlated approximately two lattice spacings.