Percolating cluster of center vortices and confinement

Abstract

We study the role of percolating clusters of center vortices in configurations of an Ising gauge theory in 3D. It is known that low energy features of gauge theories can be described in terms of an ``effective string picture'', and that confinement properties are associated with topologically non-trivial configurations. We focus our attention upon percolating clusters of center vortices, and present numerical evidence for the fact that these objects play a preminent role in confinement phenomenon, since their removal sweeps off confinement altogether. Moreover, numerical simulations show that the string fluctuations, and in particular the Luescher term, are completely encoded in the percolating cluster.