The QCD Vacuum as a Disordered Chromomagnetic Condensate

Abstract

An attempt is made to describe from first principles the large-scale structure of the confining vacuum in quantum chromodynamics. Starting from our previous variational studies of the SU(2) pure gauge theory in an external Abelian chromomagnetic field and extending Feynman’s qualitative analysis in (2+1)-dimensional SU(2) gauge theory, we show that the SU(3) vacuum in three-space and one-time dimensions behaves like a disordered chromomagnetic condensate. Color confinement is assured by the presence of a mass gap together with the absence of color long-range correlations. We offer a clear physical picture for the formation of the flux tube between static quark charges that allows us to determine the color structure and the transverse profile of the flux-tube chromoelectric field. The transverse profile of the flux-tube chromoelectric field turns out to be in reasonable agreement with lattice data. We, also, show that our quantum vacuum allows for both the color and ordinary Meissner effect. We find that for massless quarks, the quantum vacuum can accommodate a finite non-zero density of fermion zero modes leading to the dynamical breaking of the chiral symmetry.