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Center Vortices and Chiral Symmetry Breaking in SU(2) Lattice Gauge Theory

We investigate the chiral properties of near-zero modes for thick classical center vortices in SU (2) lattice gauge theory as examples of the phenomena which may arise in a vortex vacuum. In particular we analyze the creation of near-zero modes from would-be zero modes of various topological charge contributions from center vortices. We show that classical colorful spherical vortex and instanton ensembles have almost identical Dirac spectra and the low-lying eigenmodes from spherical vortices show all characteristic properties for chiral symmetry breaking. We further show that also vortex intersections are able to give rise to a finite density of near-zero modes, leading to chiral symmetry breaking via the Banks-Casher formula. We discuss the mechanism by which center vortex fluxes contribute to chiral symmetry breaking.