The Cornell potential in Lee-Wick inspired electrodynamics

Abstract

In the seventies, Lee and Wick proposed an interesting modification of classical electrodynamics that renders it finite at the quantum level. At the classical level, this modified theory leads to a regular linear potential at short distances while also reproducing the Coulomb potential at large distances. It is shown that a suitable modification of the Lee-Wick idea can also lead to a linear potential at large distances. For this purpose, we study an Abelian model that ``simulates" the QCD confining phase while maintaining the Coulomb behavior at short distances. This paper is organized in three parts. In the first part, we present a pedagogical derivation of the static potential in the Lee-Wick model between two heavy test charges using the Hamiltonian formulation. In the second part, we describe a modification of the Lee-Wick idea leading to the standard Cornell potential. In the third part, we consider the effect of replacing a point-like charge with a smeared Gaussian-type source, that renders the electrostatic potential finite as r--> 0.