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Title: Instantaneous Coulomb interaction for a long-range background field in quantum chromodynamics

Journal Article · · Phys. Rev., D; (United States)

The instantaneous Coulomb interaction is studied in the SU(2) Yang-Mills theory. The Coulomb Green's function and instantaneous Coulomb potential of a static quark-antiquark pair are evaluated for a background gauge field A/sup i//sub a/( x ) that is spherically symmetric and of long range, i.e., that is of order vertical-bar x vertical-bar/sup -1/ as vertical-bar x vertical-bar ..-->.. infinity. The field A/sup i//sub a/( x ) is of the same form as the Wu-Yang magnetic-monopole field. Expansion of the Coulomb Green's function in vector spherical harmonic functions reduces the problem to a radial problem. It is shown that the background field changes the asymptotic form of the instantaneous Coulomb interaction; specifically for the monopole field the correction term is of the same magnitude as the ordinary Coulomb interaction at large distances. In addition, the instanton contribution to the qq-bar potential energy is calculated in the temporal-gauge formulation of the theory, and compared to the instantaneous Coulomb interaction. This calculation illustrates the interpretation of instantons as tunneling field configurations. The possibility that long-range field fluctuations with the magnetic-monopole form occur in an ionized meron phase of quantum chromodynamics is discussed.

Research Organization:
Physics Department, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana 47405
OSTI ID:
5786508
Journal Information:
Phys. Rev., D; (United States), Vol. 20:8
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English