Perfect Abelian dominance of confinement in quark-antiquark potential in SU(3) lattice QCD

Abstract

In the context of the dual superconductor picture for the confinement mechanism, we study maximally Abelian (MA) projection of quark confinement in SU(3) quenched lattice QCD with $32^4$ at $\beta$=6.4 (i.e., $a \simeq$ 0.058 fm). We investigate the static quark-antiquark potential $V(r)$, its Abelian part $V_{\rm Abel}(r)$ and its off-diagonal part $V_{\rm off}(r)$, respectively, from the on-axis lattice data. As a remarkable fact, we find almost perfect Abelian dominance for quark confinement, i.e., $\sigma_{\rm Abel} \simeq \sigma$ for the string tension, on the fine and large-volume lattice. We find also a nontrivial summation relation of $V(r) \simeq V_{\rm Abel}(r) + V_{\rm off}(r)$.