No Arabic abstract
The topological susceptibility of the SU(3) random vortex world-surface ensemble, an effective model of infrared Yang-Mills dynamics, is investigated. The model is implemented by composing vortex world-surfaces of elementary squares on a hypercubic lattice, supplemented by an appropriate specification of vortex color structure on the world-surfaces. Topological charge is generated in this picture by writhe and self-intersection of the vortex world-surfaces. Systematic uncertainties in the evaluation of the topological charge, engendered by the hypercubic construction, are discussed. Results for the topological susceptibility are reported as a function of temperature and compared to corresponding measurements in SU(3) lattice Yang-Mills theory. In the confined phase, the topological susceptibility of the random vortex world-surface ensemble appears quantitatively consistent with Yang-Mills theory. As the temperature is raised into the deconfined regime, the topological susceptibility falls off rapidly, but significantly less so than in SU(3) lattice Yang-Mills theory. Possible causes of this deviation, ranging from artefacts of the hypercubic description to more physical sources, such as the adopted vortex dynamics, are discussed.
The center vortex model for the infrared sector of SU(3) Yang-Mills theory is reviewed. After discussing the physical foundations underlying the model, some technical aspects of its realisation are discussed. The confining properties of the model are presented in some detail and compared to known results from full lattice Yang-Mills theory. Particular emphasis is put on the new phenomenon of vortex branching, which is instrumental in establishing first order behaviour of the SU(3) phase transition. Finally, the vortex free energy is verified to furnish an order parameter for the deconfinement phase transition. It is shown to exhibit a weak discontinuity at the critical temperature, in agreement with predictions from lattice gauge theory.
In this work, we analyzed a recent proposal to detect $SU(N)$ continuum Yang-Mills sectors labeled by center vortices, inspired by Laplacian-type center gauges in the lattice. Initially, after the introduction of appropriate external sources, we obtained a rich set of sector-dependent Ward identities, which can be used to control the form of the divergences. Next, we were able to show the all-order multiplicative renormalizability of the center-vortex free sector. These are important steps towards the establishment of a first principles, well-defined, and calculable Yang-Mills ensemble.
By using the method of center projection the center vortex part of the gauge field is isolated and its propagator is evaluated in the center Landau gauge, which minimizes the open 3-dimensional Dirac volumes of non-trivial center links bounded by the closed 2-dimensional center vortex surfaces. The center field propagator is found to dominate the gluon propagator (in Landau gauge) in the low momentum regime and to give rise to an OPE correction to the latter of ${sqrt{sigma}}/{p^3}$.The screening mass of the center vortex field vanishes above the critical temperature of the deconfinement phase transition, which naturally explains the second order nature of this transition consistent with the vortex picture. Finally, the ghost propagator of maximal center gauge is found to be infrared finite and thus shows that the coset fields play no role for confinement.
We apply a machine learning technique for identifying the topological charge of quantum gauge configurations in four-dimensional SU(3) Yang-Mills theory. The topological charge density measured on the original and smoothed gauge configurations with and without dimensional reduction is used as inputs for the neural networks (NN) with and without convolutional layers. The gradient flow is used for the smoothing of the gauge field. We find that the topological charge determined at a large flow time can be predicted with high accuracy from the data at small flow times by the trained NN; for example, the accuracy exceeds $99%$ with the data at $t/a^2le0.3$. High robustness against the change of simulation parameters is also confirmed with a fixed physical volume. We find that the best performance is obtained when the spatial coordinates of the topological charge density are fully integrated out in preprocessing, which implies that our convolutional NN does not find characteristic structures in multi-dimensional space relevant for the determination of the topological charge.
The correlations between the modulus of the Polyakov loop, its phase $theta$ and the Landau gauge gluon propagator at finite temperature are investigated in connection with the center symmetry for pure Yang-Mills SU(3) theory. In the deconfined phase, where the center symmetry is spontaneously broken, the phase of the Polyakov loop per configuration is close to $theta = 0$, $pm , 2 pi /3$. We find that the gluon propagator form factors associated with $theta approx 0$ differs quantitatively and qualitatively from those associated to $theta approx pm , 2 pi /3$. This difference between the form factors is a property of the deconfined phase and a sign of the spontaneous breaking of the center symmetry. Furthermore, given that this difference vanishes in the confined phase, it can be used as an order parameter associated to the deconfinement transition. For simulations near the critical temperature $T_c$, the difference between the propagators associated to $theta approx 0$ and $theta approx pm , 2 pi /3$ allows to classify the configurations as belonging to the confined or deconfined phase. This establishes a selection procedure which has a measurable impact in the gluon form factors. Our results also show that the absence of the selection procedure can be erroneously taken as lattice artifacts.