42nd International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory (Lattice 2025)

Session

Vacuum structure and confinement

3 Nov 2025, 14:30

Homi Bhabha Auditorium (TIFR Mumbai)

Conveners

Vacuum structure and confinement

• Ivan Horvath

Vacuum structure and confinement

• Shailesh Chandrasekharan (Duke University)

Vacuum structure and confinement

• Sipaz Sharma (TUM)

8. The confining string in 3D U(1) gauge theory beyond effective string theory

Alessandro Mariani

03/11/2025, 14:30

Talk

The confining string in non-Abelian gauge theories is described to high precision by effective string theory. On the other hand, U(1) gauge theory in three dimensions, while confining, displays some peculiar properties which violate the assumptions of effective string theory. In particular, it is not possible to hold both the mass and string tension fixed in the continuum limit. We report...

18. Intrinsic width of the flux tube in 2+1 dimensional Yang-Mills theories

Lorenzo Verzichelli (Università di Torino, INFN sezione di Torino)

03/11/2025, 14:50

Talk

We study the profile of the flux tube in non-Abelian gauge theories in the confined phase, by means of precise lattice numerical simulations. We observe a non-Gaussian profile with prominent exponentially decaying tails. From the characteristic decay length length, we extract the intrinsic width of the flux tube. We compute this scale at different values of the temperature in the confined...

266. Why there is no confinement when vortices proliferate but monopoles do not

Mendel Nguyen

03/11/2025, 15:10

Talk

Two competing pictures of the confinement mechanism in 3+1D non-abelian gauge theory have been the proliferation of center vortices and the proliferation of magnetic monopoles. In this talk, I will provide a unified and surprising picture of confinement, which clarifies some confusion in the literature concerning the role of vortices. In particular, I will argue that whereas the simultaneous...

108. The simplicity of confinement

Biagio Lucini (Queen Mary University of London (UK))

03/11/2025, 15:30

Talk

I revisit the proposal that colour confinement in non-Abelian gauge theories is related to the dynamics of Abelian magnetic monopoles using methods derived from Topological Data Analysis, which provide a mathematically rigorous characterisation of topological properties of fields defined on a lattice. After introducing homology, I shall discuss how this concept can be used to quantitatively...

35. The mass of the Baryon Junction in $(2+1)d$

Dario Panfalone

03/11/2025, 15:50

Talk

We present a systematic study of baryonic flux tubes in $\mathrm{SU}(3)$ Yang--Mills theory in $(2\!+\!1)$ dimensions. A recent next-to-leading–order derivation within the Effective String Theory framework has, for the first time, made explicit the corrections proportional to the baryon--junction mass $M$, up to order $1/R^2$ (where $R$ is the length of the confining strings), opening the...

222. Neural-network parametrized ground state optimization for the static quark-antiquark pair

Julian Mayer-Steudte

04/11/2025, 14:50

Talk

The extraction of the static quark-antiquark potential from lattice QCD suffers from the poor signal-to-noise ratio of Wilson loops at large Euclidean times. To overcome this, smearing methods or the Coulomb gauge are used to improve the ground-state overlap with respect to the straight Wilson line trial state within the Wilson loop. We introduce a neural-network parametrization of trial...

198. Entanglement as a Probe of Flux Tube Structure

Rocco Amorosso

04/11/2025, 15:10

Talk

We study the entanglement entropy of flux tubes in SU(N) (2+1)-D pure gauge theory, using it as a probe of their internal structure. Through analyzing flux tube entanglement entropy across different spatial bipartitions, we extract quantitative information about the color flux tube's substructure, including its intrinsic width and its dependence on $N_c$. We compare our results to the...

205. Entanglement Entropy in Lattice Gauge Systems from a Dual Loop Formulation

Adarsh S. (National Institute of Technology Calicut)

04/11/2025, 15:30

Talk

We study the problem of defining and computing entanglement entropy in lattice gauge systems using a dual loop formulation. The main idea is to apply a sequence of canonical transformations that rewrite the standard link variables of $SU(2)$ and $U(1)$ lattice gauge theories in terms of the loop variables. This allows an easier handling of gauge-invariant degrees of freedom and gives a cleaner...

217. Phase diagram of 4D SU(3) Yang-Mills theory at $\theta = \pi$ via imaginary theta simulations

Akira Matsumoto (Graduate School of Science, Osaka Metropolitan University)

04/11/2025, 15:50

Talk

It has been predicted that the CP symmetry of the 4D SU(3) Yang-Mills theory at $\theta = \pi$ is spontaneously broken in the confined phase, and it is recovered precisely at the deconfining temperature.
The direct simulation of the theory at $\theta = \pi$ is, however, difficult due to the sign problem.
Thus, we simulate the theory with an imaginary theta parameter and perform analytic...

264. Update on the computation of the unquenched Yang-Mills lattice spectrum in the 't Hooft limit

Andrea Falzetti ("Sapienza" University of Rome)

04/11/2025, 16:40

Talk

We report on the continued efforts to measure the glueball and meson spectra of Yang-Mills lattice gauge theories based on the gauge group $SU(N_c)$ in the t’Hooft limit.
We employ a multilevel sampling algorithm to measure glueball correlators to reduce statistical noise in the large time separation limit. The gluon operator basis is composed of spatial Wilson loop with vanishing momentum...

38. Direct numerical simulation of 't Hooft partition function and (de)confining phase

Okuto Morikawa (RIKEN iTHEMS)

04/11/2025, 17:00

Talk

We propose a novel approach to directly simulate the 't Hooft partition function and revisit the (de)confining phase structure of an $SU(N)$ gauge theory with the $\mathbb{Z}_N$ $1$-form symmetry. We develop a hybrid Monte Carlo algorithm (the halfway HMC) for the $SU(N)/\mathbb{Z}_N$ gauge theory. The usual partition function $\mathcal{Z}[B]$ with 't Hooft flux $B$ can be numerically computed...

65. Meson spectrum and low-energy constants in large-$N$ QCD

Claudio Bonanno (IFT UAM/CSIC Madrid)

04/11/2025, 17:20

Talk

I will present new non-perturbative results about the meson spectrum and the low-energy constants of QCD in the 't Hooft large-$N$ limit, $N \to \infty$ with $N_{\rm f}/N \to 0$. These are obtained from lattice Monte Carlo simulations of the Twisted Eguchi-Kawai (TEK) model up to $N=841$.

More precisely, I will discuss the determination of radial Regge trajectories in the $\pi$ and $\rho$...