Masters Thesis

Scaling properties of Wilson loops pierced by P-vortices

A center vortex is a special type of fluctuation in the Yang-Mills vacuum that appears to be responsible for the phenomenon known in physics as quark confinement. The main point of my research was to test if excitations on the center-projected ZN lattice known as P-vortices are effective at locating center vortices, and therefore correlated with gauge-invariant observables. This was done by studying the ratios of expectation values for Wilson loops associated with one P-vortex piercing, to those of Wilson loops associated with zero P-vortex piercings. The classification of the Wilson loops was done on the Z% lattice, but the calculations of the Wilson loop expectation values were done on the unprojected 577(2) lattice. We then plotted these ratios versus loop area in physical units, for a range of lattice couplings. The data points fall approximately on a single curve, consistent with scaling. Surprisingly, the ratios are rather insensitive to the location of the vortex piercing within the Wilson loop.

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