Topological symmetry breaking and the confinement of anyons
Abstract
We study topological symmetry breaking via the behaviour of Wilson and 't Hooft loop operators for the 2+1 dimenesional Abelian-Higgs model with Chern-Simons term. The topological linking of instantons, which are closed vortex loop configurations, give rise to a long-range, logarithmic, confining potential between electric charges and magnetic flux tubes even though all perturbative forces are short range. Gauss' law forces the concomitance of charge and magnetic flux, hence the confinement is actually of anyons.
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