No Arabic abstract
The strong coupling constant $1/g^2$ and the vacuum angle $theta$ of the SU(3) Yang-Mills theory are investigated in the infrared limit under the renormalization group flow. It is shown that the theory has an infrared attractive fixed point at $1/g^2 = theta = ,0$, which leads to linear confinement and naturally solves the strong CP problem. In particular, any initial value of $theta eq 0$ is found to be driven to $theta = 0$ at macroscopic distances, where quarks and gluons freeze into hadrons by the confinement mechanism.
A general discussion is presented of the possible symmetries responsible for confinement of color and of their evidence in lattice simulations. The consequences on the phase diagram of $QCD$ are also analyzed.
The infamous strong CP problem in particle physics can in principle be solved by a massless up quark. In particular, it was hypothesized that topological effects could substantially contribute to the observed nonzero up-quark mass without reintroducing CP violation. Alternatively to previous work using fits to chiral perturbation theory, in this Letter, we bound the strength of the topological mass contribution with direct lattice QCD simulations, by computing the dependence of the pion mass on the dynamical strange-quark mass. We find that the size of the topological mass contribution is inconsistent with the massless up-quark solution to the strong CP problem.
Some aspects are discussed of the mechanism of color confinement in QCD by condensation of magnetic monopoles in the vacuum.
The long standing problem is solved why the number and the location of monopoles observed in Lattice configurations depend on the choice of the gauge used to detect them, in contrast to the obvious requirement that monopoles, as physical objects, must have a gauge-invariant status. It is proved, by use of non-abelian Bianchi identities, that monopoles are indeed gauge-invariant: the technique used to detect them has instead an efficiency which depends on the choice of the abelian projection, in a known and controllable way.
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 $Qbar Q$ system in lattice QCD with various spacing $a$ at $beta$=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 $Qbar Q$ systems: $sigma_{Abel} simeq sigma$. Second, we accurately measure the static 3Q potential for more than 300 different patterns of 3Q systems with 1000-2000 gauge configurations using two large physical-volume lattices: ($beta$,$L^3$x$L_t$)=(5.8,$16^3$x32) and (6.0,$20^3$x32). For all the distances, the static 3Q potential is found to be well described by the Y-Ansatz: two-body Coulomb term plus three-body Y-type linear term $sigma L_{min}$, where $L_{min}$ is the minimum flux-tube length connecting the three quarks. We find perfect Abelian dominance of the string tension also for the 3Q systems: $sigma^{Abel}_{3Q}simeq sigma_{3Q} simeq sigma$. Finally, we accurately investigate monopole dominance in SU(3) lattice QCD at $beta$=5.8 on $16^3$x32 with 2,000 gauge configurations. Abelian-projected QCD in the MA gauge has not only the color-electric current $j^mu$ but also the color-magnetic monopole current $k^mu$, which topologically appears. By the Hodge decomposition, the Abelian-projected QCD system can be divided into the monopole part ($k_mu e 0$, $j_mu=0$) and the photon part ($j_mu e 0$, $k_mu=0$). We find monopole dominance of the string tension for $Qbar Q$ and 3Q systems: $sigma_{Mo}simeq 0.92sigma$. While the photon part has almost no confining force, the monopole part almost keeps the confining force.