Rigidity and percolation of center vortices

Abstract

Effective action of center vortices in SU(2) lattice gauge theory is investigated by studying the correlation between the action density on their worldsheets and their geometric properties. It turns out that center vortices are rigid, however, their dynamics is more complicated than that of rigid random surfaces, since some coupling constants have nonstandard scaling dimensions. As a result, the properties of center vortices are almost completely determined by curvature-dependent effects. This, in turn, provides a qualitative explanation of vortex percolation.