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S. Olejnik

Publications and source records attributed to S. Olejnik.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2013

Testing the Yang-Mills vacuum wave functional Ansatz in 3+1 dimensions

We proposed a simple Ansatz for the vacuum wave functional (VWF) of SU(2) gauge theory in temporal gauge. In 2+1 dimensions, the Ansatz was shown to be a fairly good approximation to the true VWF of the theory. Relative probabilities of various test configurations in the vacuum can be computed in numerical simulations of lattice-regulated SU(2) gauge theory by the method proposed long ago by Greensite and Iwasaki. We report promising (albeit still preliminary) results of testing the proposed VWF in 3+1 dimensions on various sets of lattice gauge field configurations.

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arXiv2011

Adjoint torelons, and the persistence of color electric flux tubes in the deconfined phase

It is argued that the adjoint torelon loop, i.e. a Polyakov loop in the adjoint representation running in a spatial, rather than temporal, direction, is an observable which is sensitive to the presence of long color electric flux tubes at high temperatures. We show via lattice Monte Carlo simulations that this observable has a sharp peak at the deconfinement transition, remains much larger than the vacuum value for some range of $T>T_c$, and falls below the vacuum value for $T > 2T_c$. This result suggests that long electric flux tubes may persist for a finite range of temperatures past the deconfinement transition, and at some stage disappear, presumably melting into a plasma of gluons. As a side remark, we point out that our results at $T<T_c$ imply that the eigenvalues of ordinary Polyakov loop holonomies in the confinement phase have a slight tendency to attract rather than repel, which may be relevant to certain models of confinement.

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arXiv2011

In quest of the Yang-Mills vacuum wavefunctional

A simple recursion procedure was devised to generate lattice configurations with probability distributions given by simple approximate Yang-Mills vacuum wavefunctionals. A few quantities determined in ensembles of these configurations are compared to those computed in configurations generated in standard Monte Carlo simulations of the three-dimensional Yang-Mills theory.

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arXiv2011

Testing Proposals for the Yang-Mills Vacuum Wavefunctional by Measurement of the Vacuum

We review a method, suggested many years ago, to numerically measure the relative amplitudes of the true Yang-Mills vacuum wavefunctional in a finite set of lattice-regulated field configurations. The technique is applied in 2+1 dimensions to sets of abelian plane wave configurations of varying amplitude and wavelength, and sets of non-abelian constant configurations. The results are compared to the predictions of several proposed versions of the Yang-Mills vacuum wavefunctional that have appeared in the literature. These include (i) a suggestion in temporal gauge due to Greensite and Olejnik; (ii) the "new variables" wavefunction put forward by Karabali, Kim, and Nair; (iii) a hybrid proposal combining features of the temporal gauge and new variables wavefunctionals; and (iv) Coulomb gauge wavefunctionals developed by Reinhardt and co-workers, and by Szczepaniak and co-workers. We find that wavefunctionals which simplify to a "dimensional reduction" form at large scales, i.e. which have the form of a probability distribution for two-dimensional lattice gauge theory, when evaluated on long-wavelength configurations, have the optimal agreement with the data.

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arXiv2010

The QCD vacuum wave functional and confinement in Coulomb gauge

We report results on the Coulomb-gauge ghost propagator and the color-Coulomb potential computed in two lattice gauge-field ensembles: (1) configurations derived from our recently proposed Yang-Mills vacuum wave functional in 2+1 dimensions, and (2) lattices generated by Monte Carlo simulations of the three-dimensional Euclidean SU(2) lattice gauge theory with the Wilson action. We observe remarkable agreement between the ghost propagators in both ensembles, but some differences in the potentials. Those originate from rare configurations with very small values of the lowest eigenvalue of the Coulomb-gauge Faddeev-Popov operator. If the same cuts on such exceptional configurations are applied in both ensembles, then the color-Coulomb potentials are also in reasonably good agreement.

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arXiv2010

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 $μ_0$, 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 $μ_0$, the agreement of the potential in both sets of configurations is again satisfactory, although the errorbars grow systematically as the cutoff is eliminated.

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arXiv2009

Vacuum structure and Casimir scaling in Yang-Mills theories

The vacuum of Yang-Mills theories can be imagined as a magnetically disordered medium with domain structure, with color magnetic flux in each domain quantized in units corresponding to the gauge group center. This model leads to the prediction of Casimir scaling, i.e. the proportionality of string tensions of potentials (at intermediate distances) between color sources from higher-representations to eigenvalues of the quadratic Casimir operator. I present evidence for Casimir scaling in G(2) lattice gauge theory. I also discuss support for some ingredients of the model from the recently conjectured form of the Yang-Mills ground-state wave-functional.

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arXiv2009

Gluon chains and the quark-antiquark potential

The flux tube between a quark and an antiquark in Coulomb gauge is imagined in the gluon-chain model as a sequence of constituent gluons bound together by Coulombic nearest-neighbor interactions. We diagonalize the transfer matrix in SU(2) lattice gauge theory in a finite basis of states containing a static quark-antiquark pair together with zero, one, and two gluons in Coulomb gauge. We show that while the string tension of the color-Coulomb potential (obtained from the zero-gluon to zero-gluon element of the transfer matrix) overshoots the true asymptotic string tension by a factor of about three, the inclusion of a few states with constituent gluons reduces the discrepancy considerably. The minimal energy eigenstate of the transfer matrix in the zero-, one-, and two-gluon basis exhibits a linearly rising potential with the string tension only about 1.4 times larger than the asymptotic one.

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arXiv2009

Constituent Gluon Content of the Static Quark-Antiquark State in Coulomb Gauge

Motivated by the gluon-chain model of flux tube formation, we compute and diagonalize the transfer matrix in lattice SU(2) gauge theory for states containing heavy static quark-antiquark sources, with separations up to one fermi. The elements of the transfer matrix are calculated by variational Monte Carlo methods, in a basis of states obtained by acting on the vacuum state with zero, one, and two-gluon operators in Coulomb gauge. The color Coulomb potential is obtained from the zero gluon to zero gluon element of the transfer matrix, and it is well-known that while this potential is asymptotically linear, it has a slope which is two to three times larger than the standard asymptotic string tension. We show that the addition of one and two gluon states results in a potential which is still linear, but the disagreement with the standard asymptotic string tension is reduced to 38% at the largest lattice coupling we have studied.

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arXiv2008

Center vortex influence on the Dirac spectrum

We study the influence of center vortices on the low-lying eigenmodes of the Dirac operator, in both the overlap and asqtad formulations. For center-projected configurations, one finds that the low-lying near-zero modes are present in the staggered (asqtad) formulation, but not in the overlap and "chirally-improved" formulations. We argue that this is due to the absence of a field-independent chiral symmetry in the latter formulations, when the Dirac operator is evaluated on the very rough configurations generated by center projection. We also confirm and extend the results of Kovalenko et al. [Phys. Lett. B 648, 383 (2007)], finding strong correlations between center vortex locations, and the scalar density of low-lying Dirac eigenmodes on unprojected lattices, in both asqtad and overlap formulations. It is found that the low-lying eigenmodes have their largest concentrations in point-like regions, rather than on submanifolds of higher dimensionality.

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arXiv2008

First evidence for Casimir scaling in G(2) lattice gauge theory

Potentials between static quarks and antiquarks from a few lowest representations were evaluated in numerical simulations of 4-dimensional pure G$_2$ lattice gauge theory at various couplings. The obtained potentials are linearly rising at intermediate distances and their string tensions exhibit (approximate) Casimir scaling. This result is in accordance with a model of the vacuum of non-Abelian gauge theories with a domain structure, in which the (color) magnetic flux randomly fluctuates within a domain, but the total flux in each domain is quantized in units of the gauge group center.

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arXiv2008

Casimir scaling in G(2) lattice gauge theory

We computed potentials between static color sources from the six lowest representations of G(2) lattice gauge theory, in numerical simulations with the Wilson action on asymmetric lattices with nonperturbatively estimated values of the bare anisotropy. We present evidence for (approximate) Casimir scaling of the obtained intermediate string tensions. The agreement with the Casimir-scaling prediction improves by increasing the coupling beta in the weak-coupling region above the crossover observed in G(2) gauge theory. The result naturally fits into confinement models with magnetic disorder and vacuum domain structure, but may represent a challenge for other approaches.

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arXiv2008

Dimensional Reduction and the Yang-Mills Vacuum State in 2+1 Dimensions

We propose an approximation to the ground state of Yang-Mills theory, quantized in temporal gauge and 2+1 dimensions, which satisfies the Yang-Mills Schrodinger equation in both the free-field limit, and in a strong-field zero mode limit. Our proposal contains a single parameter with dimensions of mass; confinement via dimensional reduction is obtained if this parameter is non-zero, and a non-zero value appears to be energetically preferred. A method for numerical simulation of this vacuum state is developed. It is shown that if the mass parameter is fixed from the known string tension in 2+1 dimensions, the resulting mass gap deduced from the vacuum state agrees, to within a few percent, with known results for the mass gap obtained by standard lattice Monte Carlo methods.

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arXiv2007

Color Screening, Casimir Scaling, and Domain Structure in G(2) and SU(N) Gauge Theories

We argue that screening of higher-representation color charges by gluons implies a domain structure in the vacuum state of non-abelian gauge theories, with the color magnetic flux in each domain quantized in units corresponding to the gauge group center. Casimir scaling of string tensions at intermediate distances results from random spatial variations in the color magnetic flux within each domain. The exceptional G(2) gauge group is an example rather than an exception to this picture, although for G(2) there is only one type of vacuum domain, corresponding to the single element of the gauge group center. We present some numerical results for G(2) intermediate string tensions and Polyakov lines, as well as results for certain gauge-dependent projected quantities. In this context, we discuss critically the idea of projecting link variables to a subgroup of the gauge group. It is argued that such projections are useful only when the representation-dependence of the string tension, at some distance scale, is given by the representation of the subgroup.

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arXiv2007

Yang-Mills Ground State in 2+1 Dimensions and Temporal Gauge

A gauge-invariant wavefunctional is proposed as an approximation to the ground state of Yang-Mills theory in 2+1 dimensions, quantized in temporal gauge. The proposed vacuum state is the true ground state of the appropriate Hamiltonian in both the free-field limit, and in a zero mode strong-field limit. Confinement, in this approach, arises via dimensional reduction, and we present numerical results for the mass gap. The issue of color screening is briefly discussed.

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arXiv2006

Peculiarities in the Spectrum of the Adjoint Scalar Kinetic Operator in Yang-Mills Theory

We study the spectrum of low-lying eigenmodes of the kinetic operator for scalar particles, in the color adjoint representation of Yang-Mills theory. The kinetic operator is the covariant Laplacian, plus a constant which serves to renormalize mass. In the pure gauge theory, our data indicates that the interval between the lowest eigenvalue and the mobility edge tends to infinity in the continuum limit. On these grounds, it is suggested that the perturbative expression for the scalar propagator may be misleading even at distance scales that are small compared to the confinement scale. We also measure the density of low-lying eigenmodes, and find a possible connection to multi-critical matrix models of order m=1.

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