Fractional instanton of the SU(3) gauge theory in weak coupling regime

Abstract

Abstract Motivated by recent studies on the resurgence structure of quantum field theories, we numerically study the nonperturbative phenomena of the SU(3) gauge theory in a weak coupling regime. We find that topological objects with a fractional charge emerge if the theory is regularized by an infrared (IR) cutoff via the twisted boundary conditions. Some configurations with nonzero instanton number are generated as a semi-classical configuration in the Monte Carlo simulation even in the weak coupling regime. Furthermore, some of them consist of multiple fractional-instantons. We also measure the Polyakov loop to investigate the center symmetry and confinement. The fractional-instanton corresponds to a solution linking two of degenerate ℤ3-broken vacua in the deconfinement phase.