Greensite J. An Introduction to the Confinement Problem

2nd Edition. — Springer, 2020. — 273 p. — (Lecture Notes in Physics 972). — ISBN: 978-3-030-51562-1.This book addresses the confinement problem, which concerns the behavior of non-abelian gauge theories, and the force which is mediated by gauge fields, at large distances. The word “confinement” in the context of hadronic physics originally referred to the fact that quarks and gluons appear to be trapped inside mesons and baryons, from which they cannot escape. There are other, and possibly deeper meanings that can be attached to the term, and these will be explored in this book. Although the confinement problem is far from solved, much is now known about the general features of the confining force, and there are a number of very well motivated theories of confinement which are under active investigation. This volume gives a both pedagogical and concise introduction and overview of the main ideas in this field, their attractive features, and, as appropriate, their shortcomings.
This second edition summarizes some of the developments in this area which have occurred since the first edition of this book appeared in 2011. These include new results in the caloron/dyon picture of confinement, in functional approaches, and in studies of the Yang-Mills vacuum wave functional. Special attention, in two new chapters, is given to recent numerical investigations of the center vortex theory, and to the varieties of confinement which may exist in gauge-Higgs theories.Global Symmetry, Local Symmetry, and the Lattice
What Is Confinement?
Order Parameters for Confinement
Properties of the Confining Force
Confinement from Center Vortices I
Confinement from Center Vortices II
Confinement from Center Vortices III
Monopoles, Calorons, and Dual Superconductivity
Coulomb Confinement
Ghosts, Gluons, and Dyson-Schwinger Equations
Large-N, Planar Diagrams, and the Gluon-Chain Model
The Vacuum Wavefunctional
Anti-deSitter Space and Confinement
Symmetry, Confinement, and the Higgs Phase
Concluding Remarks