Renormalon Cancellation and Perturbative QCD Potential as a Coulomb+Linear Potential

Abstract

Recently evidence has been found that the perturbative QCD potential agrees well with phenomenological potentials and lattice computations of the QCD potential. We review the present status of the perturbative QCD potential and theoretical backgrounds. We also report our recent analysis which shows analytically, on the basis of renormalon dominance picture, that the perturbative QCD potential quickly ``converges'' to a Coulomb-plus-linear form. The Coulomb-plus-linear potential can be computed systematically as we include more terms of the perturbative series; up to three-loop running (our current best knowledge), it shows a convergence towards lattice results. e.g. At one-loop running, the linear potential is sigma*r with sigma = (2*pi*C_F/beta0) Lambda_MSbar^2.