HEP Theory Journal Club

QCD strings and their effective string description

Hari Dass

Tata Institute for Fundamental Research

The Dual Superconductor picture, proposed as a resolution for the problem of Quark Confinement, predicts Flux Tubes connecting quarks. Evidence for such flux tubes in QCD has been unambiguously provided by Lattice Gauge Simulations. An algorithmic breakthrough by Luscher and Weisz permitted very accurate studies of the flux tube which showed that the subdominant term in ground state energy was characterstic of Bosonic Strings, the original candidates for explaining strong interactions. Pushan Majumdar and myself carried out massive simulations using the Luscher-Weisz algorithm. We showed that even the next two higher order terms are exactly what is expected of a free bosonic string. Peter Matlock and myself subsequently proved this result analytically using the idea of effective string theories. I shall conclude by briefly reviewing the status of even higher order corrections as well as some implications of all these results.