String Breaking as a Mixing Phenomenon in the SU(2) Higgs Model

The static potential in the confinement ``phase'' of the SU(2) Higgs model is studied. In particular, the observation of the screening (called string breaking) of the static quarks by the dynamical light quarks leading to the formation of two static-light mesons was not observed before my work in non-Abelian gauge theories. The tool that I employ is lattice gauge simulation. The observable from which the spectrum of the Hamiltonian in presence of two static quarks can be extr...

We investigate the static potential in the confinement phase of the SU(2) Higgs model on the lattice, where this model is expected to have properties similar to QCD. We observe that Wilson loops are inadequate to determine the potential at large distances, where the formation of two color-neutral mesons is expected. Introducing smeared fields and a suitable matrix correlation function, we are able to overcome this difficulty. We observe string breaking at a distance $r_b \app...

We present results for the static potential in the confinement phase of the SU(2) Higgs model on the lattice. Introducing a suitable matrix correlation function we observe string breaking at a distance r_b ~ 1.8 r_0, where the length scale r_0 has a value r_0 ~ 0.5 fm in QCD. The method presented here may lead the way towards a treatment of string breaking in QCD.

We present results for the ground state and first excited state static potentials in the confinement "phase" of the SU(2) Higgs model. String breaking and the crossing of the energy levels are clearly visible. We address the question of the cut-off effects in our results and observe a remarkable scaling of the static potentials.

We present clear numerical evidence for string breaking in three-dimensional SU(2) gauge theory with fundamental bosonic matter through a mixing analysis between Wilson loops and meson operators representing bound states of a static source and a dynamical scalar. The breaking scale is calculated in the continuum limit. In units of the lightest glueball we find $r_{\rm b} m_G\approx13.6$. The implications of our results for QCD are discussed.

We study the phase structure of SU(2) gauge-Higgs model in two dimensions using lattice simulations. We show the result for the plaquette expectation value, static potential, and W propagator. Our results suggest that a confinement-like region and a Higgs-like region appear even in two dimensions. The behavior of the plaquette expectation value is consistent with a smooth cross-over in accordance with the Fradkin-Shenker-Osterwalder-Seiler theorem. In the confinement-like reg...

The static potential in the 3d SU(2) Higgs model is computed by a variational calculation employing Wilson loops and two-meson operators. String breaking is demonstrated numerically, the breaking scale is determined and the results are compared with a quenched calculation.

We study string breaking in the three dimensional SU(2) Higgs model, using values of the gauge coupling for which the confinement-like and Higgs-like regions of the phase diagram are separated just by a smooth crossover. We show that even in the presence of string breaking, the confining part of the interquark potential is well described by the Effective String Theory and that also the fine details of the effective string, like the higher order terms of the Nambu-Goto action ...

A model for SU(n) string breaking on the lattice is formulated using strong coupling ideas. Although necessarily rather crude, the model gives an explicit picture of string breaking in the presence of dynamical quarks as a mixing phenomenon that involves the string state and a two-meson state. A careful analysis, within the model, of the Wilson loop shows that the evolution of the mixing angle as a function of separation may obscure the expected crossover effect. If a suffici...

The static potential $V(r)$ between a static quark and a static antiquark separated by a distance r is defined as the energy of the ground state of the system. As a consequence of confinement, the energy between the quark-antiquark pair is contained inside a color flux tube, which will break due to pair creation as soon as the energy is high enough. String breaking is manifested as a quantum-mechanical mixing phenomenon between different states containing two infinitely heavy...