On the temporal Wilson loop in the Hamiltonian approach in Coulomb gauge

We investigate the temporal Wilson loop using the Hamiltonian approach to Yang-Mills theory. In simple cases such as the Abelian theory or the non-Abelian theory in (1+1) dimensions, the known results can be reproduced using unitary transformations to take care of time evolution. We show how Coulomb gauge can be used for an alternative solution if the exact ground state wave functional is known. In the most interesting case of Yang-Mills theory in (3+1) dimensions, the vacuum wave functional is not known, but recent variational approaches in Coulomb gauge give a decent approximation. We use this formulation to compute the temporal Wilson loop and find that the Wilson and Coulomb string tension agree within our approximation scheme. Possible improvements of these findings are briefly discussed.Comment: 24 pages, 4 eps-figures; new version matches published on

The role of center vortices in Gribov's confinement scenario

The connection of Gribov's confinement scenario in Coulomb gauge with the center vortex picture of confinement is investigated. For this purpose we assume a vacuum wave functional which models the infrared properties of the theory and in particular shows strict confinement, i.e. an area law of the Wilson loop. We isolate the center vortex content of this wave functional by standard lattice methods and investigate their contributions to various static propagators of the Hamilton approach to Yang-Mills theory in Coulomb gauge. We find that the infrared properties of these quantities, in particular the infrared divergence of the ghost form factor, are dominated by center vortices.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figure

Ghost propagator and the Coulomb form factor from the lattice

We calculate the Coulomb ghost propagator G(|p|) and the static Coulomb potential V_C(|r|) for SU(2) Yang-Mills theory on the lattice. In view of possible scaling violations related to deviations from the Hamiltonian limit we use anisotropic lattices to improve the temporal resolution. We find that the ghost propagator is infrared enhanced with an exponent kappa_gh ~ 0.5 while the Coulomb potential exhibits a string tension larger than the Wilson string tension, sigma_C ~ 2 sigma. This agrees with the Coulomb "scaling" scenario derived from the Gribov-Zwanziger confinement mechanism.Comment: 23 pages, 5 figures. Some issues clarified and extended, references added. To appear in PR

Coulomb Confinement from the Yang-Mills Vacuum State in 2+1 Dimensions

The Coulomb-gauge ghost propagator, and the color-Coulomb potential, are computed in an ensemble of configurations derived from our recently proposed Yang-Mills vacuum wavefunctional in 2+1 dimensions. The results are compared to the corresponding values obtained by standard Monte Carlo simulations in three Euclidean dimensions. The agreement is quite striking for the Coulomb-gauge ghost propagator. The color-Coulomb potential rises linearly at large distances, but its determination suffers from rather large statistical fluctuations, due to configurations with very low values of $\mu_0$, the lowest eigenvalue of the Coulomb-gauge Faddeev-Popov operator. However, if one imposes cuts on the data, effectively leaving out configurations with very low $\mu_0$, the agreement of the potential in both sets of configurations is again satisfactory, although the errorbars grow systematically as the cutoff is eliminated.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures (10 EPS files), RevTeX4.1. V2: original figs. 4 and 5 compressed into a new fig. 5; a new fig. 4; sec. IV.B slightly modified to reflect the changes. Version to appear in Phys. Rev. D. V3: a reference corrected

Attractive Electromagnetic Casimir Stress on a Spherical Dielectric Shell

Based on calculations involving an idealized boundary condition, it has long been assumed that the stress on a spherical conducting shell is repulsive. We use the more realistic case of a Drude dielectric to show that the stress is attractive, matching the generic behavior of Casimir forces in electromagnetism. We trace the discrepancy between these two cases to interactions between the electromagnetic quantum fluctuations and the dielectric material.Comment: Five pages, one figure, pdflatex, matches version to be pusblished in Phys Lett

Stable charged cosmic strings

We study the quantum stabilization of a cosmic string by a heavy fermion doublet in a reduced version of the standard model. We show that charged strings, obtained by populating fermionic bound state levels, become stable if the electro--weak bosons are coupled to a fermion that is less than twice as heavy as the top quark. This result suggests that extraordinarily large fermion masses or unrealistic couplings are not required to bind a cosmic string in the standard model. Numerically we find the most favorable string profile to be a simple "trough" in the Higgs vev of radius $\approx 10^{-18}\,\mathrm{m}$. The vacuum remains stable in our model, because neutral strings are not energetically favored.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, version to be published in Phys. Rev. Let