STRING BREAKING AND MONOPOLES IN THE 3D ABELIAN HIGGS MODEL

摘要

We study the breaking of the confining string between test charges in the three dimensional Abelian Higgs model, with compact gauge field and fundamentally charged matter at zero temperature. We demonstrate1 that the loss of confinement with increasing hopping parameter is accompanied by a crossover rather than by an ordinary phase transition. However, a Berezinsky-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition could not be excluded. In accordance with Ref. and in analogy to the finite temperature deconfining transition in 2+1 dimensional compact QED4, the origin of string breaking is identified as pairing of monopoles. The typical monopole- antimonopole distance is of the order of the string breaking radius R_(br) such that, piecewise at distances R < R_(br) between test charges, a linearly rising potential may still be induced by monopoles.