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arXiv · 2607.27550

Confinement and String Breaking in the Compact Abelian Higgs Model

Blake Senseman·Zane Ozzello·Yannick Meurice·Stephen Mrenna
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Abstract

While real-time simulation of Quantum Chromodynamics remains technologically out of reach, simplified models for studying elements of QCD phenomenology abound. This work presents a simple model, a spin-1 truncation of the Compact Abelian Higgs Model simulated on qutrit sites, in which confinement and string breaking is accessible to current simulation methods. In the low-energy regime of 1+1D scalar electrodynamics, the heavy modes are integrated out, producing a spin chain effective Hamiltonian in which Gauss' law is implicitly satisfied. We study the spectrum of string-like excitations using DMRG methods on the order of 100 sites. We demonstrate that an added, local chemical potential, playing a role analogous to external charges, permits parameter-dependent measurements of physical features of interest like the string tension and effective meson mass. Varying the chemical potential also permits a characterization of string stability not assessed in prior studies of confining lattice models.

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Blake Senseman, Zane Ozzello, Yannick Meurice, Stephen Mrenna. 2026-07-30. Confinement and String Breaking in the Compact Abelian Higgs Model. https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.27550

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