We present the first study of the Abelian-projected gluonic-excitation energies for the static quark-antiquark (Q$\bar{\rm Q}$) system in SU(3) lattice QCD at the quenched level, using a $32^4$ lattice at $β= 6.0$. We investigate ground-state and three excited-state Q$\bar{\rm Q}$ potentials, using smeared link variables on the lattice. We find universal Abelian dominance for the quark confinement force of the excited-state Q$\bar{\rm Q}$ potentials as well as the ground-state potential. Remarkably, in spite of the excitation phenomenon in QCD, we find Abelian dominance for the first gluonic-excitation energy of about 1 GeV at long distances in the maximally Abelian gauge. On the other hand, no Abelian dominance is observed for higher gluonic-excitation energies even at long distances. This suggests that there is some threshold between 1 and 2 GeV for the applicable excitation-energy region of Abelian dominance. Also, we find that Abelian projection significantly reduces the short-distance $1/r$-like behavior in gluonic-excitation energies.
We give a gauge-independent definition of Abelian dominance in the Wilson loop operator and a constructive proof of the Abelian dominance through a non-Abelian Stokes theorem via lattice regularization. We obtain a necessary and sufficient condition for the Abelian dominance in the Wilson loop operator in the fundamental representation. In the continuum limit, the gauge field is decomposed such that the Abelian dominance is given as an exact operator relation, leading to the exact (100%) Abelian dominance. On a lattice, we estimate the deviation from the exact Abelian dominance due to non-zero…
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.
We study the Abelian projection of quark confinement in SU(3) quenched lattice QCD, in terms of the dual superconductor picture. In the maximal Abelian gauge, we perform the Cartan decomposition of the non-Abelian gauge field on a $32^4$ lattice with spacing $a \simeq0.058, 0.10$ fm (i.e., $β=6.4, 6.0$), and investigate the interquark potential $V(r)$, the Abelian part $V_{\mathrm{Abel}}(r)$, and the off-diagonal part $V_{\mathrm{off}}(r)$. For the potential analysis, we use both on-axis data and several types of off-axis data, with larger numbers of gauge configurations. Remarkably, we find a…
We show that a certain type of color magnetic condensation originating from magnetic monopole configurations is sufficient to provide the mass for off-diagonal gluons in the SU(2) Yang-Mills theory under the Cho--Faddeev--Niemi decomposition. We point out that the generated gluon mass can cure the instability of the Savvidy vacuum. In fact, such a novel type of magnetic condensation is shown to occur by calculating the effective potential. This enables us to explain the infrared Abelian dominance and monopole dominance by way of a non-Abelian Stokes theorem, which suggests the dual superconduc…
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…
In the context of the dual superconductor picture for the confinement mechanism, we study maximally Abelian (MA) projection of quark confinement in SU(3) quenched lattice QCD with $32^4$ at $β$=6.4 (i.e., $a \simeq$ 0.058 fm). We investigate the static quark-antiquark potential $V(r)$, its Abelian part $V_{\rm Abel}(r)$ and its off-diagonal part $V_{\rm off}(r)$, respectively, from the on-axis lattice data. As a remarkable fact, we find almost perfect Abelian dominance for quark confinement, i.e., $σ_{\rm Abel} \simeq σ$ for the string tension, on the fine and large-volume lattice. We find als…
We show that off-diagonal gluons and off-diagonal ghosts acquire their masses dynamically in QCD if the maximal Abelian gauge is adopted. This result strongly supports the Abelian dominance in low-energy region of QCD. The mass generation is shown to occur due to ghost-anti-ghost condensation caused by attractive quartic ghost interactions within the Abelian projected effective gauge theory (derived by one of the authors). In fact, the quartic ghost interaction is indispensable for the renormalizability due to nonlinearity of the maximal Abelian gauge. The ghost-anti-ghost condensation is asso…
A comparative study of Abelian and Monopole dominance in the Laplacian and Maximally Abelian projected gauges is carried out. Clear evidence for both types of dominance is obtained for the Laplacian projection. Surprisingly, the evidence is much more ambiguous in the Maximally Abelian gauge. This is attributed to possible ``long-distance imperfections'' in the maximally abelian gauge fixing.
We study the similarity and the difference between QCD in the maximally abelian (MA) gauge and the nonabelian Higgs (NAH) theory by introducing the ``gluonic Higgs scalar field'' $\vec ϕ(x)$ corresponding to the ``color-direction'' of the nonabelian gauge connection. The infrared-relevant gluonic mode in QCD can be extracted by the projection along the color-direction $\vec ϕ(x)$ like the NAH theory. This projection is manifestly gauge-invariant, and is mathematically equivalent to the ordinary MA projection. Since $\vec ϕ(x)$ obeys the adjoint gauge transformation and is diagonalized in the M…
We study abelian dominance for confinement in terms of the local gluon properties in the maximally abelian (MA) gauge in a semi-analytical manner with the help of the lattice QCD. The global Weyl symmetry persistently remains as the relic of SU($N_c$) in the MA gauge, and provides the ambiguity on the electric and magnetic charges. We derive the criterion on the SU($N_c$)-gauge invariance in terms of the residual symmetry in the abelian gauge. In the lattice QCD, we find microscopic abelian dominance on the link variable for the whole region of $β$ in the MA gauge. The off-diagonal angle varia…
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…
We establish a relation between the two-point field strength correlator in QCD and the dual field propagator of the effective dual Abelian Higgs model describing the infrared behaviour of QCD.
We describe a new order parameter for the confinement-deconfinement transition in lattice SU(2) Yang-Mills theory. It is expressed in terms of magnetic monopole field correlators represented as sums over sheets of center vortices. Our construction establishes a link between "abelian" and "center dominance". It avoids an inconsistency in the treatment of small scales present in earlier definitions of monopole fields by respecting Dirac's quantization condition for magnetic fluxes.
We find that Polyakov lines, computed in abelian-projected SU(2) lattice gauge theory in the confined phase, have finite expectation values for lines corresponding to two units of the abelian electric charge. This means that the abelian-projected lattice has at most Z(2), rather than U(1), global symmetry. We also find a severe breakdown of the monopole dominance approximation, as well as positivity, in this charge-2 case. These results imply that the abelian-projected lattice is not adequately represented by a monopole Coulomb gas; the data is, however, consistent with a center vortex structu…
On lattice gauge field configurations with 2+1 dynamical quark flavors, we investigate the momentum space quark and gluon propagators in the combined maximally Abelian plus $U(1)_3\times U(1)_8$ Landau gauge. We extract the gluon fields from the lattice link variables and study the diagonal and off-diagonal gluon propagators. We find that the infrared region of the transverse diagonal gluon propagator is strongly enhanced compared to the off-diagonal propagator. The Dirac operator from the Asqtad action is inverted on the diagonal and off-diagonal gluon backgrounds separately. In agreement wit…
We analyze previously proposed order parameters for the confinement - deconfinement transition in lattice SU(2) Yang-Mills theory, defined as vacuum expectation value (v.e.v.) of monopole fields in abelian projection gauges. We show that they exhibit some inconsistency in the treatment of small scales, due to a violation of Dirac quantization condition for fluxes. We propose a new order parameter avoiding this inconsistency. It can be interpreted as v.e.v. of the field of a regular monopole in any abelian projection gauge, but it is independent of the choice of the abelian projection. Furtherm…
Abelian dominance in the case of color sources in the fundamental representation is shown to follow from certain properties of maximal abelian projected SU(2) gauge theory. The possibility of having an analog of abelian dominance in the case of adjoint representation sources is addressed in the same framework.
A projection (gauge) independent formulation of the monopole dominance, discovered in lattice QCD for the maximal abelian projection, is given. A new dynamical abelian projection of continuum QCD, which does not rely on any explicit gauge condition imposed on gauge fields, is proposed. Under the assumption that the results of numerical simulations holds in the continuum limit, the monopole dominance is proved for the dynamical abelian projection. The latter enables us to develop an effective scalar field theory for dominant (monopole) configurations of gauge fields. The approach is manifestly …
Recently, we have developed a reformulation of the lattice Yang-Mills theory based on the change of variables a la Cho-Faddeev-Niemi combined with a non-Abelian Stokes theorem. In this talk, we give a new procedure (called reduction) for obtaining the color field which plays the central role in this reformulation. In the 4D SU(2) lattice Yang-Mills theory, we confirm the gauge-independent "abelian" dominance and gauge-independent magnetic-monopole dominance in the string tension extracted from the Wilson loop in the fundamental representation.
It has been conjectured that the Abelian projection of QCD is responsible for the confinement of color. Using a gauge independent definition of the Abelian projection which does {\it not} employ any gauge fixing, we provide a strong evidence for the Abelian dominance in Wilson loop integral. In specific we prove that the gauge potential which contributes to the Wilson loop integral is precisely the one restricted by the Abelian projection.
The critical properties of the abelian Polyakov loop and the Polyakov loop in terms of Dirac string are studied in finite temperature abelian projected $SU(2)$ QCD. We evaluate the critical point and the critical exponents from each Polyakov loop in the maximally abelian gauge using the finite-size scaling analysis. Abelian dominance in this case is proved quantitatively. The critical point of each abelian Polyakov loop is equal to that of the non-abelian Polyakov loop within the statistical errors. Also, the critical exponents are in good agreement with those from non-abelian Polyakov loops.
In SU(3) lattice QCD formalism, we propose a method to extract gauge fields from link-variables analytically. With this method, we perform the first study on effective mass generation of off-diagonal gluons and infrared Abelian dominance in the maximally Abelian (MA) gauge in the SU(3) case. Using SU(3) lattice QCD, we investigate the propagator and the effective mass of the gluon fields in the MA gauge with U(1)$_3 \timesU(1)_8$ Landau gauge fixing. The Monte Carlo simulation is performed on $16^4$ at $β$=5.7, 5.8 and 6.0 at the quenched level. The off-diagonal gluons behave as massive vector…
We use a renormalisation group based smoothing to address two questions related to Abelian dominance. Smoothing enables us to extract the Abelian heavy-quark potential from time-like Wilson loops on Polyakov gauge projected configurations. We obtained a very small string tension which is inconsistent with the string tension extracted from Polyakov loop correlators. This shows that the Polyakov gauge projected Abelian configurations do not have a consistent physical meaning. We also apply the smoothing on SU(2) configurations to test how sensitive Abelian dominance in the maximal Abelian gauge …
We give an argument for deriving analytically the infrared ``Abelian'' dominance in a gauge invariant way for the Wilson loop average in SU(2) Yang--Mills theory. In other words, we propose a possible mechanism for realizing the dynamical Abelian projection in the SU(2) gauge-invariant manner without breaking color symmetry. This supports validity of the dual superconductivity picture for quark confinement. We also discuss the stability of the vacuum with magnetic condensation as a by-product of this result.
We used a renormalisation group based smoothing to address two questions related to abelian dominance. Smoothing drastically reduces short distance fluctuations but it preserves the long distance physical properties of the SU(2) configurations. This enabled us to extract the abelian heavy-quark potential from time-like Wilson loops on Polyakov gauge projected configurations. We obtained a very small string tension which is inconsistent with the string tension extracted from Polyakov loop correlators. This shows that the Polyakov gauge projected abelian configurations do not have a consistent p…
Asymptotic freedom arises from the dominance of anti-screening over screening in non-abelian gauge theories. In this paper we will present a simple and physically appealing derivation of the anti-screening contribution to the interquark potential. Our method allows us to identify the dominant gluonic distribution around static quarks. Extensions are discussed.
We perform lattice Monte-Carlo simulations of pure SU(2) QCD using the multi-level method. We find Abelian dominance in local unitary gauges such as those diagonalizing a plaquette. A static potential described by Abelian link fields alone gives us the same string tension as that of a non-Abelian potential. Abelian dominance of the string tension and Abelian flux tube profiles are observed also without gauge-fixing, i.e., without any Abelian projection. On the basis of these results, we propose a simple gauge-independent Abelian confinement scenario without any Abelian projection. All color co…
We study the properties of gluons in QCD in the maximally abelian (MA) gauge. In the MA gauge, the off-diagonal gluon behaves as the massive vector boson with the mass $\Meff \simeq 1.2 {\rm GeV}$, and therefore the off-diagonal gluon cannot carry the long-range interaction for $r \gg \Meff^{-1} \simeq 0.2$ fm. The essence of the infrared abelian dominance in the MA gauge is physically explained with the generation of the off-diagonal gluon mass $\Meff \simeq 1.2 {\rm GeV}$ induced by the MA gauge fixing, and the off-diagonal gluon mass generation would predict general infrared abelian dominan…
We study the gluon propagator in the MA gauge with the lattice QCD Monte Carlo simulation. The simulation is performed using the heat-bath algorithm on the SU(2) lattice with $12^3 \times 24$ and $β= 2.3, 2.35$. The propagator of the off-diagonal charged gluon behaves as the massive gauge boson and provides the short-range interaction, while the diagonal gluon propagates long distance. This is the origin of the abelian dominance in the long-range physics.
This paper complements a new lattice formulation of SU(2) Yang-Mills theory written in terms of new variables in a compact form proposed in the previous paper. The new variables used in the formulation were once called the Cho--Faddeev--Niemi or Cho--Faddeev--Niemi--Shabanov decomposition. Our formulation enables us to explain the infrared ``Abelian'' dominance, in addition to magnetic monopole dominance shown in the previous paper, in the gauge invariant way without relying on the specific gauge fixing called the maximal Abelian gauge used in the conventional investigations. In this paper, es…
We study abelian dominance for confinement in terms of the local gluon properties in the maximally abelian (MA) gauge, where the diagonal component of the gluon is maximized by the gauge transformation. We find microscopic abelian dominance on the link-variable for the whole region of $β$ in the lattice QCD in the MA gauge. The off-diagonal angle variable, which is not constrained by the MA-gauge fixing condition, tends to be random besides the residual gauge degrees of freedom. Within the random-variable approximation for the off-diagonal angle variable, we analytically prove that off-diagona…
Propagators of the diagonal and the off-diagonal gluons are studied numerically in the Maximal Abelian gauge of SU(2) lattice gauge theory. It is found that in the infrared region the propagator of the diagonal gluon is strongly enhanced in comparison with the off--diagonal one. The enhancement factor is about 50 at our smallest momentum 325 MeV. We have also applied various fits to the propagator formfactors.
We discuss a new approach to the investigation of the nature of the mass gap in spin systems with continuous global symmetries which is much analogous to the method of abelian projection in the gauge theories. We suggest that the abelian degrees of freedom, in particular, abelian vortices are responsible for the mass gap generation phenomena in the non-abelian spin systems. To check our hypothesis we study numerically the three-dimensional SU(2) spin model in the Maximal Abelian projection. We find that the abelian mass gap in the projected theory coincides with the full non-abelian mass gap w…
We study effective mass generation of off-diagonal gluons and infrared abelian dominance in the maximally abelian (MA) gauge. Using the SU(2) lattice QCD, we investigate the propagator and the effective mass of the gluon field in the MA gauge with the U(1)$_3$ Landau gauge fixing. The Monte Carlo simulation is performed on the $12^3 \times 24$ lattice with $2.2 \le β\le 2.4$, and also on the $16^4$ and $20^4$ lattices with $2.3 \le β\le 2.4$. In the MA gauge, the diagonal gluon component $A_μ^3$ shows long-range propagation, and infrared abelian dominance is found for the gluon propagator. In …
We study the topological feature in the QCD vacuum based on the hypothesis of abelian dominance. The topological charge $Q_{\rm SU(2)}$ can be explicitly represented in terms of the monopole current in the abelian dominated system. To appreciate its justification, we directly measure the corresponding topological charge $Q_{\rm Mono}$, which is reconstructed only from the monopole current and the abelian component of gauge fields, by using the Monte Carlo simulation on SU(2) lattice. We find that there exists a one-to-one correspondence between $Q_{\rm SU(2)}$ and $Q_{\rm Mono}$ in the maximal…
We study infrared abelian dominance and the dual Higgs mechanism in the maximally abelian (MA) gauge using the lattice QCD Monte Carlo simulation. In the MA gauge, the off-diagonal gluon phase tends to be random, and the off-diagonal gluon $A_μ^\pm$ acquires the effective mass as $M_{\rm off} \simeq$ 1.2 GeV. From the monopole current in the MA gauge, we extract the dual gluon field $B_μ$ and estimate the dual gluon mass as $m_B \simeq $ 0.5 GeV. The QCD-monopole structure is also investigated in terms of off-diagonal gluons. From the lattice QCD in the MA gauge, the dual Ginzburg-Landau (DGL)…
The dual superconductivity is a promising mechanism for quark confinement. We have proposed the non-Abelian dual superconductivity picture for SU(3) Yang-Mills theory, and showed the restricted field dominance (called conventionally Abelian dominance), and non-Abelian magnetic monopole dominance in the string tension. We have further demonstrated by measuring the chromoelectric flux that the non-Abelian dual Meissner effect exists and determined that the dual superconductivity for SU(3) case is of type I, which is in sharp contrast to the SU(2) case: the border of type I and type II. In this t…
Performing highly precise Monte-Carlo simulations of SU(2) gluodynamics, we observe for the first time Abelian dominance in the confining part of the static potential in local unitary gauges such as the F12 gauge. We also study the flux-tube profile between the quark and antiquark in these local unitary gauges and find a clear signal of the dual Meissner effect. The Abelian electric field is found to be squeezed into a flux tube by the monopole supercurrent. This feature is the same as that observed in the non-local maximally Abelian gauge. These results suggest that the Abelian confinement sc…
We investigate gluon propagators and the effective mass of the gluon fields in the MA gauge with U(1)$_3 \times$ U(1)$_8$ Landau gauge fixing in SU(3) lattice QCD. The Monte Carlo simulation is performed on $16^4$ at $β$=5.7, 5.8 and 6.0 and $32^4$ at $β=$5.8 and 6.0 at the quenched level. To calculate the propagators, we adopt a method to extract gauge fields from link-variables analytically in the SU(3) case. The off-diagonal gluons behave as massive vector bosons with the approximate effective mass $M_{\rm off} \simeq 1.1 - 1.2 {\rm GeV}$ in the region of $r = 0.3 - 0.8 {\rm fm}$, and the p…
We study the static three-quark (3Q) potential for more than 300 different patterns of 3Q systems with high statistics, i.e., 1000-2000 gauge configurations, in SU(3) lattice QCD at the quenched level. For all the distances, the 3Q potential is found to be well described by the Y-ansatz, i.e., one-gluon-exchange (OGE) Coulomb plus Y-type linear potential. Also, we investigate Abelian projection of quark confinement in the context of the dual superconductor picture proposed by Yoichiro~Nambu~{\it et al.} in SU(3) lattice QCD. Remarkably, quark confinement forces in both Q$\bar{\rm Q}$ and 3Q sy…
We formulate a stochastic gauge fixing method to study the gauge dependence of Abelian projection. In this method, one can change the gauge from the maximally Abelian one to no gauge fixing continuously. We have found that the linear part of the heavy quark potential from Abelian contribution depends little on the gauge parameter. Similar results have been obtained for the monopole contribution part.We also investigate the gauge dependence of the length of monopole loop, which is known to be important for the confinement, and monopole density. These results suggest that the picture that monopo…
Assuming the monopole dominance, that has been proved in the lattice gluodynamics, to hold in the continuum limit, we develop an effective scalar field theory for QCD at large distances to describe confinement. The approach is based on a gauge (or projection) independent formulation of the monopole dominance and manifestly Lorentz invariant.
We study the baryonic three-quark (3Q) potential and its Abelian projection in terms of the dual-superconductor picture in SU(3) quenched lattice QCD. The non-Abelian SU(3) gauge theory is projected onto Abelian U(1)$^2$ gauge theory in the maximal Abelian gauge. We investigate the 3Q potential and its Abelian part for more than 300 different patterns of static 3Q systems in total at $β=5.8$ on $16^332$ and at $β=6.0$ on $20^332$ with 1000-2000 gauge configurations. For all the distances, both the 3Q potential and Abelian part are found to be well described by the Y ansatz, i.e., two-body Coul…
The near threshold photo or electroproduction of heavy vector quarkonium off the proton is studied in quantum chromodynamics. Similar to the high-energy limit, the production amplitude can be factorized in terms of gluonic Generalized Parton Distributions and the quarkonium distribution amplitude. At the threshold, the threshold kinematics has a large skewness parameter $ξ$, leading to the dominance of the spin-2 contribution over higher-spin twist-2 operators. Thus threshold production data are useful to extract the gluonic gravitational form factors, allowing studying the gluonic contributio…
In the maximally Abelian gauge of SU(2), the clusters of monopole current are found to divide into two distinct classes. The largest cluster permeates the lattice, has a density that scales and produces the string tension. The remaining clusters possess an approximate 1/l^3 number density distribution (l is the cluster length), their radii vary as \sqrt l and their total current density does not scale. Their contribution to the string tension is compatible with being exactly zero. Their number density can be thought of as arising from an underlying scale invariant distribution. This suggests t…
The dual superconductivity is believed to be a promising mechanism for quark confinement. Indeed, what this picture is true has been confirmed in the maximal Abelian (MA) gauge. However, it is not yet confirmed in any other gauge and the MA gauge explicitly breaks color symmetry. To remedy this defect, we propose to use our compact formulation of a non-linear change of variables on a lattice. This formulation has succeeded to extract the magnetic monopole with integer-valued magnetic charge in the gauge-invariant way. In this talk, we present measurements of various correlation functions for t…
In the $SU(2)$ Yang-Mills theory on the four-dimensional Euclidean lattice, we confirm the gauge-independent "Abelian" dominance (or the restricted field dominance) and gauge-independent magnetic-monopole dominance in the string tension of the linear potential extracted from the Wilson loop in the fundamental representation. The dual Meissner effect is observed by demonstrating the squeezing of the chromoelectric field flux connecting a pair of quark and antiquark. In addition, the circular magnetic-monopole current is induced around the chromoelectric flux. The type of the dual superconductiv…
We show that the color $N$ dependent area law falloffs of the double-winding Wilson loop averages for the $SU(N)$ lattice gauge theory obtained in the preceding works are reproduced from the corresponding lattice Abelian gauge theory with the center gauge group $Z_N$. This result indicates the center group dominance in quark confinement.
In earlier work, we used a gauge independent Abelian Decomposition to show that Abelian degrees of freedom are wholly responsible for the static quark potential. The restricted Abelian field can be split into two terms, a Maxwell term and a $θ$ (Dirac) term. The $θ$ term's contribution to the string tension can be analysed theoretically and numerically, and arises because of the existence of a certain type of monopole. While the Abelian field can be constructed without gauge fixing, its two component parts are gauge-dependent, with a gauge transformation moving the topological features from on…
The dual superconductivity is a promising mechanism for quark confinement. We proposed the non-Abelian dual superconductivity picture for SU(3) Yang-Mills theory, and demonstrated the restricted field dominance (called conventionally "Abelian" dominance), and non-Abelian magnetic monopole dominance in the string tension. In the last conference, we have demonstrated by measuring the chromoelectric flux that the non-Abelian dual Meissner effect exists and determined that the dual superconductivity for SU(3) case is of type I, which is in sharp contrast to the SU(2) case: the border of type I and…
Three topics concerning infrared effective lattice QCD are discussed. (1)Perfect lattice action of infrared SU(3) QCD and perfect operators for the static potential are analytically given when we assume two-point monopole interactions alone. The assumption seems to be justified from numerical analyses of pure SU(3) QCD in maximally abelian gauge. (2)Gauge invariance of monopole dominance can be proved theoretically if the gauge invariance of abelian dominance is proved. The gauge invariance of monopole condensation leads us to confinement of abelian neutral but color octet states after abelian…
