Chromoelectric flux tubes in QCD

Abstract

We analyze the distribution of the chromoelectric field generated by a static quark-antiquark pair in the SU(3) vacuum and revisit previous results for SU (2). We find that the transverse profile of the flux tube resembles the dual version of the Abrikosov vortex field distribution. We give an estimate of the London penetration length of the chromoelectric field in the confined vacuum. We also speculate on the value of the ratio between the penetration lengths for SU(2) and SU(3) gauge theories.

Flux tubes in the QCD vacuum

“…Still, the dual superconductivity picture of the QCD vacuum can serve as a very useful phenomenological tool to interpret the vacuum dynamics. Many previous studies of our collaboration (or of a part of it) [10][11][12][13][14][18][19][20][21][22] have indeed furnished clear evidence that, at zero temperature, color flux tubes, made up almost completely by the longitudinal chromoelectric field directed along the line joining a static quark-antiquark pair, can be successfully described within the dual superconductivity picture, both in SU(2) and in SU (3) pure gauge theories. In our most recent paper [42] the investigation of the structure of flux tubes in SU(3) was extended to the case of nonzero temperature and lead to the result that the flux tube between two static sources separated by a distance of about 0.76 fm survives even above the critical temperature T c of the deconfinement transition, keeping a more or less constant transverse shape, but housing in it a weaker and weaker chromoelectric field as the temperature increases.…”

Flux Tubes in QCD with (2+1) HISQ Fermions

“…The lattice formulation of QCD allows us to investigate the color confinement phenomenon within a nonperturbative framework. It is known since long from lattice numerical simulations, that tubelike structures emerge by analyzing the chromoelectric fields between static quarks [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]. Such tubelike structures naturally lead to a linear potential between static color charges and, consequently, to a direct numerical evidence of color confinement.…”

Y-stringlike behavior of a static baryon at finite temperature

“…The squeezed flux-tube, by virtue of the surrounding superconductiong medium [2,3,13], is conjectured to vibrate, after roughening, like a massless string. The profile of the vibrating flux tube can be unraveled in numerical lattice simulations by correlating the field strength of the QCD vacuum to the constructed quark states [14][15][16][17]. The large distance properties of the energy distribution in the meson have been a subject of many lattice simulations targeting the properties of the flux tubes at both zero and finite temperatures.…”