Monopole Loop Suppression and Loss of Confinement in Restricted Action SU(2) Lattice Gauge Theory

Abstract

The effect of restricting the plaquette ($1\times 1$ Wilson loop) to be greater than a certain cutoff is studied. The action considered is the standard Wilson action with the addition of the plaquette restriction, which does not affect the continuum limit. A deconfining phase transition occurs as the cutoff is raised, even in the strong coupling limit. Abelian-projected monopoles in the maximal abelian gauge are strongly suppressed by the action restriction. Analysis of the steeply declining monopole loop distribution function indicates that for cutoffs $c > 0.5$, large monopole loops which are any finite fraction of the lattice size do not exist in the infinite lattice limit. This would seem to imply the theory lacks confinement, which is consistent with a fixed point behavior seen in the normalized fourth cumulant of the Polyakov loop.