String-like behaviour of 4d SU(3) Yang-Mills flux tubes

Abstract

We present here results on the fine structure of the static q\bar q potential in d=4 SU(3) Yang-Mills theory. The potential is obtained from Polyakov loop correlators having separations between 0.3 and 1.2 fermi. Measurements were carried out on lattices of spatial extents of about 4 and 5.4 fermi. The temporal extent was 5.4 fermi in both cases. The results are analyzed in terms of the force between a q\bar q pair as well as in terms of a scaled second derivative of the potential. The data is accurate enough to distinguish between different effective string models and it seems to favour the expression for ground state energy of a Nambu-Goto string.

Comments: 9 pages in LaTeX with 2 figures and 2 tables in JHEP style. Replaced to match with shortened published version