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

This work explores the possibility of obtaining a mass gap in Yang-Mills theories via the intrinsic gauge bosons, without invoking a separate Higgs boson or fermion-antifermion pairs. Instead, pairs of gauge bosons in the spin and isospin singlet state form a pair of composite Higgs bosons which can be viewed as the simplest possible glueball of Yang-Mills gauge theories. Quadratic and quartic gauge boson self-interactions form a potential that leads to a finite expectation v...

We present a one-loop calculation of the static potential in the SU(2)-Higgs model. The connection to the coupling constant definition used in lattice simulations is clarified. The consequences in comparing lattice simulations and perturbative results for finite temperature applications are explored.

We present some simple scenarios for string breaking on the lattice based on a crude strong coupling model introduced previously. We review the dependence of the model on lattice spacing and extend it to include degenerate dynamical quarks and also meson exchange diagrams. A comparison is made between quenched and unquenched calculations. We examine string breaking in the presence of a static quark-diquark system, a situation that is specific to SU(3).

A convincing, uncontroversial observation of string breaking, when the static potential is extracted from Wilson loops only, is still missing. This failure can be understood if the overlap of the Wilson loop with the broken string is exponentially small. In that case, the broken string ground state will only be seen if the Wilson loop is long enough. Our preliminary results show string breaking in the context of the 3d SU(2) adjoint static potential, using the L\"uscher-Weisz...

A model for string breaking on the lattice is formulated using strong coupling ideas. It gives an explicit picture of string breaking, in the presence of dynamical quarks, as a mixing process between a string state and a two-meson state. An analysis 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 sufficiently extensive mixing region exists then an appropriate combination of transition ...

We present results on a new operator for the investigation of string-breaking effects in quenched SU(2)-colour QCD. The ground state of a spatially-separated static-light meson-antimeson pair is a combination of a state with two distinct mesons, expected to dominate for large separations, and a state where the light quarks have annihilated, which contributes at short distances. The cross-over between these two regimes provides the string-breaking scale.

We show the running coupling as derived from the SU(3) QQ potential and discuss preliminary results on spin dependent heavy quark potentials from high statistics lattice simulations of SU(2) gauge theory. The precision suffices to study scaling properties and lattice artifacts (at short distances). We identify the Coulomb like short range interaction as a mixed vector-scalar exchange. We measure flux tube formation between a static QQ pair over physical distances up to 2 fm, ...

We present preliminary quenched results on a new operator for the investigation of string-breaking within SU(2)-colour QCD. The ground-state of a spatially-separated static-light meson-antimeson pair is a combination of a state with two distinct mesons, expected to dominate for large separations, and a state where the light-quarks have annihilated, which contributes for short distances. The crossover between these two regimes provides a measure of the string-breaking scale le...

I present results of a numerical calculation of the effects of light quark-antiquark pairs on the linear heavy-quark potential in light-cone quantized two-dimensional QCD. I extract the potential from the Q-Qbar component of the ground-state wavefunction, and observe string breaking at the heavy-light meson pair threshold. I briefly comment on the states responsible for the breaking.

We study numerically the phase structure and the gluon propagator of the SU(2) gauge-Higgs model in two dimensions. First, we calculate gauge-invariant quantities, in particular the static potential from Wilson Loop, the W propagator, and the plaquette expectation value. Our results suggest that a confinement-like region and a Higgs-like region appear even in two dimensions. In the confinement-like region, the static potential rises linearly, with string breaking at large dis...