Partitioning of electric and magnetic energy in SU(2) gauge theory

TL;DR

This paper estimates electric and magnetic energy contributions in SU(2) gauge fields, revealing linear growth with coupling and insights into field concentration, suggesting a classical mechanism for the 'MIT bag' formation.

Contribution

It provides new estimates for energy contributions in SU(2) gauge theory, highlighting linear growth and field concentration phenomena.

Findings

Electric and magnetic energies grow linearly with coupling.

Electric field is suppressed outside the source at large coupling.

Magnetic field concentrates in a shell around the source.

Abstract

This article provides some estimates for the relative sizes of the electric and magnetic contributions to the energy functional for the minimum energy configuration of an SU(2) gauge field on R^3 in the presence of an source in a fixed ball. The surprising fact is that the contribution to both energies from the free field region increases at worst linearly with the coupling, rather than quadratically. Moreover, the external electric field is severly surpressed outside the source at large coupling while the magnetic field is concentrated in a shell surrounding the source suggesting a classical mechanism for the formation of the 'MIT bag'.