Which gluon field configurations cause quark confinement? · revision history

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Revision 1: Which gluon field configurations cause quark confinement
Revision 2: Which gluon field configurations cause quark confinement?
Plain
Computer simulations show that quarks are confined, but they do not say which shapes of the gluon field are responsible. Candidate answers include thin tubes of field (vortices) and magnetic monopoles, point-like sources of magnetic field.
Precise
In $4\mathrm{D}$ $\mathrm{SU}(N)$ Yang-Mills theory, identify the class of gauge-field configurations (center vortices, Abelian monopoles in a chosen gauge, calorons and their dyon constituents, or other) whose statistics reproduce the area law $\langle W(C)\rangle \sim \exp(-\sigma A)$ of large Wilson loops, the full string tension $\sigma$, Casimir scaling of string tensions at intermediate distances and N-ality dependence at large distances. An answer is a gauge-invariant (or demonstrably gauge-independent) definition of the configurations, together with evidence that removing them removes $\sigma$ and keeping only them reproduces it.
Settled by
A gauge-invariant identification of the configurations, checked by continuum-extrapolated lattice Monte Carlo, that accounts for the full string tension and its dependence on the quark representation.
Kind
phenomenon
Answer type
mechanism
References
(empty)
Literature status
contested
Status note
Center-vortex and monopole pictures each reproduce much of the string tension in lattice studies, but both rely on gauge fixing and neither is accepted as complete (2025).
Posed since
1974

Decisions