.. _sphx_glr_api_gallery_fields_gauge_confinement:

Gauge confinement
---------------------

A simplified, illustrative 1+1D toy model of quark confinement: a field
squeezed into a fixed-cross-section "flux tube" between two opposite
charges, reproducing the linearly growing confinement energy that Kenneth
Wilson's 1974 lattice gauge theory predicted -- not a lattice-QCD or
first-principles gauge-theory calculation.


.. raw:: html

  <div id='sg-tag-list' class='sphx-glr-tag-list'></div>


.. raw:: html

    <div class="sphx-glr-thumbnails">

.. thumbnail-parent-div-open

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    <div class="sphx-glr-thumbcontainer" tooltip="Kenneth Wilson&#x27;s 1974 lattice gauge theory (&quot;Confinement of Quarks&quot;) showed that, in the strong-coupling limit, the potential energy of a static quark-antiquark pair grows linearly with separation, rather than falling off the way an ordinary Coulomb field does -- the defining signature of confinement. The physical picture is that the gluon field lines are squeezed into a narrow &quot;flux tube&quot; of fixed cross-section connecting the two charges, rather than spreading out in all directions the way an ordinary Coulomb field would.">

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  .. image:: /api/gallery/fields/gauge_confinement/images/thumb/sphx_glr_plot_flux_tube_confinement_thumb.gif
    :alt:

  :doc:`/api/gallery/fields/gauge_confinement/plot_flux_tube_confinement`

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      <div class="sphx-glr-thumbnail-title">A confining flux tube stretching between two charges</div>
    </div>


.. thumbnail-parent-div-close

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    </div>


.. toctree::
   :hidden:

   /api/gallery/fields/gauge_confinement/plot_flux_tube_confinement