Center-Vortex Solutions of the Yang-Mills Effective Action in Three and Four Dimensions

Abstract

We calculate the one-loop effective action of the SU(2) Yang-Mills theory for center-vortex configurations, both in 3d and 4d. We find that in both cases there are minima of the effective action, corresponding to vortices of the transverse size approximately 4/g_3^2 and 1.7/Lambda_MS, respectively. The values of the effective actions at the minima are negative, suggesting that the Euclidian vacuum may be unstable with respect to creation of vortices.

Comments: 18 pages, 5 figures, RevTeX, some discussion added, minor stylistic changes, none of the results changed, version to appear in Phys Rev. D