We show that the non-Abelian magnetic monopole defined in a gauge-invariant way in SU(3) Yang-Mills theory gives a dominant contribution to confinement of the fundamental quark, in sharp contrast to the SU(2) case.
Confinement of electrically charged test particles in the dilute plasma of monopoles and pointlike magnetic dipoles is studied. We calculate the tension of the string emerging between the infinitely separated test particles. The string tension is an increasing function of the dipole density provided other parameters of the plasma are fixed. The relevance of our results to confining gauge theories is discussed.
We investigate the connection between Color Confinement and thermal Abelian monopoles populating the deconfined phase of SU(2) Yang-Mills theory, by studying how the statistical properties of the monopole ensemble change as the confinement/deconfinement temperature is approached from above. In particular we study the distribution of monopole currents with multiple wrappings in the Euclidean time direction, corresponding to two or more particle permutations, and show that multiple wrappings increase as the deconfinement temperature is approached from above, in a way compatible with a condensati…
We revisit Nambu's model of quark confinement by a tube of magnetic flux, with two additional features. The quarks are taken to be magnetic monopoles external to the tube, which seal the ends, and are also taken to be fermions. This ensures that the model is inconsistent unless there are at least two species of fermions being confined.
Quark confinement is proposed to be a dual Meissner effect of nonAbelian kind. Important hints come from physics of strongly-coupled infrared-fixed-point theories in N=2 supersymmetric QCD, which turn into confining vacua under a small relevant perturbation. The quest for the semiclassical origin of the nonAbelian monopoles, ubiquitous as the infrared degrees of freedom in supersymmetric gauge theories, motivates us to study the quantum dynamics of 2D CP(N-1)model defined on a finite-width worldstrip, with various boundary conditions. The model is found to possess a unique phase ("confinement …
We discuss the effect of the choice of an Abelian projection on the dual superconductor mechanism of confinement in SU(2) gluodynamics. Using qualitative arguments we show that the dual superconductor Lagrangian corresponding to the Abelian Polyakov gauge has a different structure compared to the dual Lagrangian in the Maximal Abelian gauge. A difference between these Lagrangians reflects the fact that in continuum limit the monopoles should be static in the Abelian Polyakov gauge and therefore these monopoles can not give rise to the confinement of static quarks. Using the Abelian Polyakov ga…
We present recent results on quark confinement: in SU(3) Yang-Mills theory, confinement of fundamental quarks is obtained due to the dual Meissner effect originated from non-Abelian magnetic monopoles defined in a gauge-invariant way, which is distinct from the well-known Abelian projection scenario. This is achieved by using a non-Abelian Stokes theorem for the Wilson loop operator and a new reformulation of the Yang-Mills theory.
We study numerically two versions of the monopole creation operators proposed by Frohlich and Marchetti. The disadvantage of the old version of the monopole creation operator is due to visibility of the Dirac string entering the definition of the creation operator in the theories with coexisting electric and magnetic charges. This problem does not exist for the new creation operator which is rather complicated. Using the Abelian Higgs model with a compact gauge field we show that both definitions of the monopole creation operator can serve as order parameters for the confinement--deconfinement…
We review some recent developments on BPS string solutions and monopole confinement in the Higgs or (color) superconducting phase of deformed N=2 and N=4 super Yang-Mills theories. In particular, the monopole magnetic fluxes are shown to be always integer linear combinations of string fluxes. Moreover, a bound for the threshold length of the string breaking is obtained. When the gauge group SU(N) is broken to Z_N, the BPS string tension satisfies the Casimir scaling law. Furthermore in the SU(3) case the string solutions are such that they allow the formation of a confining system with three m…
New types of confinement phase emerge as singular SCFT's appearing as infrared-fixed-points of N=2 supersymmetric QCD (SQCD) are perturbed by an N=1 adjoint mass term. Based on a recent remarkable work on infrared-fixed-point SCFT of highest criticalities by Gaiotto, Seiberg and Tachikawa, we discuss physics of certain confining systems in SU(N), USp(2N) or SO(N) gauge theories. These show features different from a straightforward dual superconductivity picture of confinement a' la 't Hooft and Mandelstam, which might suggest a new venue in exploring the quark confinement mechanism in the real…
Aspects of the monopole condensation picture of confinement are discussed. First, the nature of the monopole singularities in the abelian projection approach is analysed. Their apparent gauge dependence is shown to have a natural interpretation in terms of 't~Hooft-Polyakov-like monopoles in euclidean SU(2) gauge theory. Next, the results and predictions of a realization of confinement through condensation of such monopoles are summarized and compared with numerical data.
We review the physics of confinement based on non-Abelian dual superconductor picture, relying on exact solutions in N=2 supersymmetric QCD and based on the recent developments in our understanding of non-Abelian vortices and monopoles. The non-Abelian monopoles, though they are basically just the 't Hooft-Polyakov SU(2) monopoles embedded in various corners of the larger gauge group, require flavor symmetry in an essential way for their very existence. The phenomenon of flavor-color-flavor separation characterizes the multiple roles flavor symmetry plays in producing quantum-mechanical non-Ab…
We give a theoretical framework for defining and extracting non-Abelian magnetic monopoles in a gauge-invariant way in SU(N) Yang-Mills theory to study quark confinement. Then we give numerical evidences that the non-Abelian magnetic monopole defined in this way gives a dominant contribution to confinement of fundamental quarks in SU(3) Yang-Mills theory, which is in sharp contrast to the SU(2) case in which Abelian magnetic monopoles play the dominant role for quark confinement.
Recently (hep-th/0104171) we considered N=2 super Yang-Mills with a N=2 mass breakingn term and showed the existence of BPS Z_{k}-string solutions for arbitrary simple gauge groups which are spontaneously broken to non-Abelian residual gauge groups. We also calculated their string tensions exactly. In doing so, we have considered in particular the hypermultiplet in the same representation as the one of a diquark condensate. In the present work we analyze some of the different phases of the theory and find that the magnetic fluxes of the monopoles are multiple of the fundamental Z_{k}-string fl…
We propose to use the different kinds of vacua of the gauge theories coupled to matter as a laboratory to test confinement ideas of pure Yang-Mills theories. In particular, the very poor overlap of the Wilson loop with the broken string states supports the 't Hooft and Mandelstam confinement criteria. However in the Z(2) gauge-Higgs model we use as a guide we find that the condensation of monopoles and center vortices is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for confinement.
We study the Z_N flux tubes and monopole confinement in deformed N=2* super Yang-Mills theories. In order to do that we consider an N=4 super Yang-Mills theory with an arbitrary gauge group G and add some N=2, N=1 and N=0 deformation terms. We analyze some possible vacuum solutions and phases of the theory, depending on the deformation terms which are added. In the Coulomb phase for the N=2* theory, G is broken to U(1)^r and the theory has monopole solutions. Then, by adding some deformation terms, the theory passes to the Higgs or color superconducting phase, in which G is broken to its cente…
We study the vacuum structure and dyon spectrum of N=2 supersymmetric gauge theory in four dimensions, with gauge group SU(2). The theory turns out to have remarkably rich and physical properties which can nonetheless be described precisely; exact formulas can be obtained, for instance, for electron and dyon masses and the metric on the moduli space of vacua. The description involves a version of Olive-Montonen electric-magnetic duality. The ``strongly coupled'' vacuum turns out to be a weakly coupled theory of monopoles, and with a suitable perturbation confinement is described by monopole co…
We give a gauge-invariant definition of the vortex surface in SU(N) Yang-Mills theory without using the gauge fixing procedure. In this construction, gauge-invariant magnetic monopoles with fractional magnetic charges emerge in the boundary of the non-oriented vortex surface such that the asymptotic string tension reproduces the correct $N$-ality dependence. We show that gauge-invariant magnetic monopoles and vortices are simultaneously responsible for quark confinement in four dimensional spacetime based on the Wilson criterion. These results are extracted from a non-Abelian Stokes theorem de…
We prove Abelian magnetic monopole dominance in the string tension of QCD. Abelian and monopole dominance in low energy physics of QCD has been confirmed for various quantities by recent Monte Carlo simulations of lattice gauge theory. In order to prove this dominance, we use the reformulation of continuum Yang-Mills theory in the maximal Abelian gauge as a deformation of a topological field theory of magnetic monopoles, which was proposed in the previous article by the author. This reformulation provides an efficient way for incorporating the magnetic monopole configuration as a topological n…
We discuss dynamics of N=2 supersymmetric SU(n_c) gauge theories with n_f quark hypermultiplets. Upon N=1 perturbation of introducing a finite mass for the adjoint chiral multiplet, we show that the flavor U(n_f) symmetry is dynamically broken to U(r) \times U(n_f-r), where r\leq [n_f/2] is an integer. This flavor symmetry breaking occurs due to the condensates of magnetic degrees of freedom which acquire flavor quantum numbers due to the quark zero modes. We briefly comment on the USp(2n_c) gauge theories. This talk is based on works with Giuseppe Carlino and Ken Konishi, hep-th/0001036 and h…
We review the physics of topological objects in QCD. Topics include: solitons, vortices, magnetic monopoles, instantons, (effective theories of) confinement.
Abelian mechanism of non-Abelian color confinement is observed in a gauge-independent way by high precision lattice Monte Carlo simulations in gluodynamics. An Abelian gauge field is extracted with no gauge-fixing. A static quark-antiquark potential derived from Abelian Polyakov loop correlators gives us the same string tension as the non-Abelian one. The Hodge decomposition of the Abelian Polyakov loop correlator to the regular photon and the singular monopole parts also reveals that only the monopole part is responsible for the string tension. The investigation of the flux-tube profile then …
We study supersymmetric $SO(N_c)$ gauge theories with $N_f$ flavors of quarks in the vector representation. Among the phenomena we find are dynamically generated superpotentials with physically inequivalent branches, smooth moduli spaces of vacua, confinement and oblique confinement, confinement without chiral symmetry breaking, massless composites (glueballs, exotics, monopoles and dyons), non-trivial fixed points of the renormalization group and massless magnetic quarks and gluons. Our analysis sheds new light on a recently found duality in $N=1$ supersymmetric theories. The dual forms of so…
To check the dual superconductor picture for the quark-confinement mechanism, we evaluate monopole dominance as well as Abelian dominance of quark confinement for both quark-antiquark and three-quark systems in SU(3) quenched lattice QCD in the maximally Abelian (MA) gauge. First, we examine Abelian dominance for the static $Q\bar Q$ system in lattice QCD with various spacing $a$ at $β$=5.8-6.4 and various size $L^3$x$L_t$. For large physical-volume lattices with $La \ge$ 2fm, we find perfect Abelian dominance of the string tension for the $Q\bar Q$ systems: $σ_{Abel} \simeq σ$. Second, we acc…
Monopole operators play a central role in 3 dimensional supersymmetric dualities: a careful understanding of their spectrum is necessary to match chiral operators on either sides of a conjectured duality. In Chern-Simons theories ($k\neq0$), monopole operators acquire an electric charge, thus they need to be "dressed" by chiral matter superfields to be made gauge-invariant. Here we present strong evidence that "dressed" monopoles appear in $SU(N)$ chiral theories even for $k=0$ because of mixed CS terms generated along certain Coulomb branch directions. Our analysis is based on the dimensional…
Recent development on non-Abeliann vortices and monopoles is reviewed with an emphasis on their relevance on confinement and duality. A very recent construction of non-Abelian vortices which do not dynamically Abelianize is crucial in this context.
We discuss some aspects of confinement and dynamical symmetry breaking in the so-called nonabelian Argyres-Douglas vacua, which occur very generally in supersymmetric theories. These systems are characterized by strongly-coupled nonabelian monopoles and dyons; confinement and dynamical symmetry breaking are caused by the condensation of monopole composites, rather than by condensation of single weakly-coupled monopoles. In general, there are strong constraints on which kind of monopoles can appear as the infrared degrees of freedom, related to the proper realization of the global symmetry of t…
A simple formal computation, and a variation on an old thought experiment, both indicate that QCD with light quarks may confine fundamental color magnetic charges, giving an explicit as well as elegant resolution to the `global color' paradox, strengthening Vachaspati's SU(5) electric-magnetic duality, opening new lines of inquiry for monopoles in cosmology, and suggesting a class of geometrically large QCD excitations -- loops of Z(3) color magnetic flux entwined with light-quark current. The proposal may be directly testable in lattice gauge theory or supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory. Recent…
Ensembles of magnetic defects represent quantum variables that have been detected and extensively explored in lattice ${\rm SU}(N)$ pure Yang-Mills theory. They successfully explain many properties of confinement and are strongly believed to capture the (infrared) path-integral measure. In this work, we initially motivate the presence of magnetic non-Abelian degrees of freedom in these ensembles. Next, we consider a simple Gaussian model to account for fluctuations. In this case, both center vortices and monopoles become relevant degrees in Wilson loop averages. These physical inputs are then …
We explicitly construct all kink solitons arising in the recent study of Auzzi, Bolognesi, and Shifman of a monopole confinement problem in ${\cal N}=2$ supersymmetric QCD. In particular, we show that all finite-energy kink solitons must be BPS.
Central role played by certain non-Abelian monopoles (of Goddard-Nuyts-Olive-Weinberg type) in the infrared dynamics in many confining vacua of softly broken ${\cal N}=2$ supersymmetric gauge theories, has recently been clarified. We discuss here the main lessons to be learned from these studies for the confinement nechanism in QCD.
In this paper we improve the existing order parameter for monopole condensation in gauge theory vacuum, making it gauge-invariant from scratch and free of the spurious infrared problems which plagued the old one. Computing the new parameter on the lattice will unambiguously detect weather dual superconductivity is the mechanism for color confinement. As a byproduct we relate confinement to the existence of a finite correlation length in the gauge-invariant correlator of chromo-electric field strengths.
Interquark confinement potential is calculated in the dual Monopole Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model with dual Dirac strings as a functional of a dual Dirac string length. The calculation is carried out by the explicit integration over quantum fluctuations of a dual-vector field (monopole-antimonopole collective excitation) around the Abrikosov flux line and string shape fluctuations. The contribution of the scalar field (monopole-antimonopole collective excitation) exchange is taken into account in the tree approximation due to the London limit regime.
We study monopoles and corresponding 't Hooft tensor in a generic gauge theory. This issue is relevant to the understanding of the color confinement in terms of dual symmetry.
The type of the vacuum is studied numerically in the maximally Abelian (MA) gauge and in the Landau (LA) gauge of SU(2) gluodynamics. The type of the vacuum is determined by a ratio between the dual coherence and the dual penetration lengths. The dual penetration length is determined from correlations between Wilson loops and electric fields in both gauges. The dual coherence length is found from correlations between Wilson loops and dimension-2 operators both in the MA and the LA gauges. This determination of the coherence length is supported by theoretical and numerical observation that the …
We investigate the dual superconductor hypothesis in finite-temperature SU(2) lattice gluodynamics in the Spatial Maximal Abelian gauge. This gauge is more physical than the ordinary Maximal Abelian gauge due to absence of non-localities in temporal direction. We show numerically that in the Spatial Maximal Abelian gauge the probability distribution of the abelian monopole field is consistent with the dual superconductor mechanism of confinement: the abelian condensate vanishes in the deconfinement phase and is not zero in the confinement phase.
As a color confinement mechanism, a dual Meissner effect due to Abelian monopoles involved in QCD has been discussed so far in various ways. But still there is an important problem unsolved. It is gauge invariance of the schemes or, in other words, the reason why non-Abelian color confinement is explained by means of the Abelian dual Meissner effect. Here it is shown that a random Abelian method based on the violation of non-Abelian Bianchi identity (VNABI) could prove SU(3) invariance and explain why color-singlets alone can survive in the confinement phase of QCD in the framework of the Abel…
Magnetic monopoles having non-Abelian charges have been found recently to play a crucial role in the infrared in a class of supersymmetric gauge theories. We argue that these "dual quarks" can naturally be identified with the non-Abelian magnetic monopoles of the type first discussed by Goddard, Nuyts and Olive. Our argument is based on a few simple observations as regards to their charge structure, flavor quantum numbers, and some general properties of electromagnetic duality.
SU(2) gluodynamics is investigated numerically and analytically in the (Indirect) Maximal Center gauge at finite temperature. The center vortices are shown to be condensed in the confinement phase and dilute in the deconfinement phase. A new physical object, center monopole, is constructed. We show that the center monopole condensate is the order parameter of deconfinement phase transition. The linking of the vortex worldsheets and quark trajectories is identified with the Aharonov-Bohm interaction in an effective Abelian Higgs theory. We conclude that the confinement in the Maximal Center gau…
The vortex picture of confinement is studied. The deconfinement phase transition is explained as a transition from a phase in which vortices percolate to a phase of small vortices. Lattice results are presented in support of this scenario. Furthermore the topological properties of magnetic monopoles and center vortices arising, respectively, in Abelian and center gauges are studied in continuum Yang-Mills-theory. For this purpose the continuum analog of the maximum center gauge is constructed.
An effective low energy action for Yang-Mills theories is proposed, which invokes an additional auxiliary field $H_{μν}$ for the field strength $F_{μν}$. For a particular relation between the parameters of this action a gluon propagator with a $1/p^4$ behaviour for $p^2 \to 0$ in the Landau gauge is obtained. The abelian subsector of this action admits a duality transformation, where the dual action contains a Goldstone boson $φ$ as the dual of $H_{μν}$, and corresponds to an abelian Higgs model in the broken phase describing the condensation of magnetic charges. The Wilsonian renormalization …
The role non-Abelian magnetic monopoles play in the dynamics of confinement is discussed by examining carefully a class of supersymmetric gauge theories as theoretical laboratories. In particular, in the so-called $r$-vacua of softly broken ${N}=2$ supersymmmetric $SU(n_c)$ QCD, the Goddard-Olive-Nuyts-Weinberg monopoles appear as the dominant low-energy effective degrees of freedom. Even more interesting is the physics of confining vacua which are deformations of nontrivial superconformal theories. We argue that in such cases, occurring in the $r= {n_f \over 2}$ vacua of $SU(n_c)$ theories or…
We study monopoles and corresponding 't Hooft tensor in QCD with a generic compact gauge group. This issue is relevant to the understanding of color confinement in terms of dual symmetry.
Dependence of the confinement transition parameters on the fermion content provides information on the mechanism of confinement. Recent progress in lattice gauge theories has allowed to study it for light flavor number $N_f\sim O(10)$ and found this transition to shift toward significantly stronger coupling. We propose an explanation for that: light fermions can occupy the chromo-magnetic monopoles, via zero modes, making them "distinguishable" and unsuitable for Bose-Einstein Condensation. Such dilution of unoccuplied monopoles is compensated by stronger coupling that makes them lighter and m…
Generalizing the geometry of the gauge covariant variables in Yang-Mills theory proposed by Johnson and Haagensen, the 4-d geometry associated with a monopole is defined for SU(2). There are three relevant geometries: AdS$_2\times S^2$, $R^2\times S^2$ and $H_+\times S^2$, depending on the asymptotic behavior of the torsion. Using this geometry, the Wilson loop average is computed {\it à la} Nambu-Goto action. In case of AdS$_2\times S^2$, it satisfies the area law.
In the presence of Chern-Simons interactions the wave functionals of physical states in 2+1-dimensional gauge theories vanish at anumber of nodal points. We show that those nodes are located at some classical configurations which carry a non-trivial magnetic charge. In abelian gauge theories this fact explains why magnetic monopoles are suppressed by Chern-Simons interactions. In non-abelian theories it suggests a relevant role for nodal gauge field configurations in the confinement mechanism of Yang-Mills theories. We show that the vacuum nodes correspond to the chiral gauge orbits of reducib…
The relation of confinement scenarios based on topological configurations and the Gribov-Zwanziger scenario is examined. To this end the eigenspectrum of the central operator in the Gribov-Zwanziger scenario, the Faddeev-Popov operator, is studied in topological field configurations. It is found that instantons, monopoles, and vortices contribute to the spectrum in a qualitatively similar way. Especially, all give rise to additional zero-modes and thus can contribute to the Gribov-Zwanziger confinement mechanism. Hence a close relation between these confinement scenarios likely exists.
The main focus of this work is to test the ideas related to the oblique confinement in a theoretically controllable manner using the "deformed QCD" as a toy model. We explicitly show that the oblique confinement in the weakly coupled gauge theories emerges as a result of condensation of $N$ types of monopoles shifted by the phase $\exp(i\frac{θ+2πm}{N})$ in Bloch type construction. It should be contrasted with conventional and commonly accepted viewpoint that the confinement at $θ\neq 0$ is due to the condensation of the electrically charged dyons which indeed normally emerge in the systems wi…
We report on recent progress in understanding confinement of colour in $QCD$ as dual superconductivity of the vacuum. A gauge invariant version of the creation operator of monopoles is constructed whose vacuum expectation value is the order parameter. This order parameter is gauge-invariant from scratch, has no infrared divergences, is finite in the confined phase and vanishes in the deconfined phase. A natural explanation also emerges of why the electric field lines in the flux tubes keep no memory of the colour orientation of the condensing monopoles. A further by-product is that the order p…
We use the generalized Julia-Toulouse approach (GJTA) for condensation of topological currents (charges or defects) to argue that massive photons can coexist consistently with Dirac monopoles. The Proca theory is obtained here via GJTA as a low energy effective theory describing an electric condensate and the mass of the vector boson is responsible for generating a Meissner effect which confines the magnetic defects in monopole-antimonopole pairs connected by physical open magnetic vortices described by Dirac brane invariants, instead of Dirac strings.
Institut Denis Poisson CNRS/UMR 7013(丹尼斯·泊松研究所(法国国家科学研究中心/7013联合研究单位));Université de Tours(图尔大学);Pacific Quantum Center(太平洋量子中心);Far Eastern Federal University(远东联邦大学);Dipartimento di Fisica, Universitá di Torino(都灵大学物理系);INFN Sezione di Torino(意大利国家核物理研究所都灵分所);Arnold-Regge Center(阿诺德-雷格中心)
We investigate the advantages of machine learning techniques to recognize the dynamics of topological objects in quantum field theories. We consider the compact U(1) gauge theory in three spacetime dimensions as the simplest example of a theory that exhibits confinement and mass gap phenomena generated by monopoles. We train a neural network with a generated set of monopole configurations to distinguish between confinement and deconfinement phases, from which it is possible to determine the deconfinement transition point and to predict several observables. The model uses a supervised learning …
We discuss some of the latest results concerning the non-Abelian vortices. The first concerns the construction of non-Abelian BPS vortices based on general gauge groups of the form G= G' x U(1). In particular detailed results about the vortex moduli space have been obtained for G'=SO(N) or USp(2N). The second result is about the "fractional vortices", i.e., vortices of the minimum winding but having substructures in the tension (or flux) density in the transverse plane. Thirdly, we discuss briefly the monopole-vortex complex.
Starting from SU(2) Yang-Mills theory in 3+1 dimensions, we prove that the abelian-projected effective gauge theories are written in terms of the maximal abelian gauge field and the dual abelian gauge field interacting with monopole current. This is performed by integrating out all the remaining non-Abelian gauge field belonging to SU(2)/U(1). We show that the resulting abelian gauge theory recovers exactly the same one-loop beta function as the original Yang-Mills theory. Moreover, the dual abelian gauge field becomes massive if the monopole condensation occurs. This result supports the dual …
We compare two competing conjectures of the color confinement in QCD, the monopole condensation and the Abelian dominance, and show that it is the monopole condensation which is responsible for the confinement. To demonstrate this we present a new gauge invariant integral expression of the one-loop QCD effective action which has no infra-red divergence. With this we show that, just as the GSO-projection restores the supersymmetry and modular invariance in NSR string theory, the color reflection invariance ("the C-projection") assures the gauge invariance and the stability of the monopole conde…
We study properties of space-like monopole trajectories in the Maximal Abelian gauge of quenched SU(2) QCD at the finite temperature. We concentrate on infrared monopole clusters which are responsible for the confinement properties of the theory. We determine numerically the effective action of the monopoles projected onto the three-dimensional time-slice. Then we derive the length distributions of the monopole loops and fix their entropy.
We study dual superconductivity of the ground state of SU(2) gauge theory, in connection with confinement. We do that measuring on the lattice a disorder parameter describing condensation of monopoles. Confinement appears as a transition to dual superconductor, independent of the abelian projection defining monopoles. Some speculations are made on the existence of a more appropriate disorder parameter. A similar study for SU(3) is presented in a companion paper.