Temporal Wilson loop in the Hamiltonian approach in Coulomb gauge

Abstract

We investigate the temporal Wilson loop using the Hamiltonian approach to Yang-Mills theory. In simple cases such as the Abelian theory or the non-Abelian theory in (1+1) dimensions, the known results can be derived using unitary transformations to take care of time evolution. Alternatively, the exact solution can also be found in Coulomb gauge using the exact ground state wave functional which is known explicitly in these simple cases. The Coulomb gauge technique can also be applied to the more realistic case of Yang-Mills theory in (3+1) dimensions, where one has to rely on the approximate vacuum wave functional obtained e.g. in recent variational approaches. We use this formulation to compute the temporal Wilson loop in (3+1) dimensional Yang-Mills theory, and find that the Wilson and Coulomb string tension agree within this approximation scheme. Possible improvements of these findings are briefly discussed.