The non-perturbative part of the plaquette in quenched QCD

Abstract

We define the non-perturbative part of a quantity as the difference between its numerical value and the perturbative series truncated by dropping the order of minimal contribution and the higher orders. For the anharmonic oscillator, the double-well potential and the single plaquette gauge theory, the non-perturbative part can be parametrized as A (lambda)^B exp{-C/lambda} and the coefficients can be calculated analytically. For lattice QCD in the quenched approximation, the perturbative series for the average plaquette is dominated at low order by a singularity in the complex coupling plane and the asymptotic behavior can only be reached by using extrapolations of the existing series. We discuss two extrapolations that provide a consistent description of the series up to order 20-25. These extrapolations favor the idea that the non-perturbative part scales like (a/r_0)^4 with a/r_0 defined with the force method. We discuss the large uncertainties associated with this statement. We propose a parametrization of ln((a/r_0)) as the two-loop universal terms plus a constant and exponential corrections. These corrections are consistent with a_{1-loop}^2 and play an important role when beta<6. We briefly discuss the possibility of calculating them semi-classically at large beta.