Paper detail

Evolving center-vortex loops

We consider coarse-graining applied to nonselfintersecting planar center-vortex loops as they emerge in the confining phase of an SU(2) Yang-Mills theory. Well-established properties of planar curve-shrinking predict that a suitably defined, geometric effective action exhibits (mean-field) critical behavior when the conformal limit of circular points is reached. This suggests the existence of an asymptotic mass gap. We demonstrate that the initially sharp mean center-of-mass position in a given ensemble of curves develops a variance under the flow as is the case for a position eigenstate in free-particle quantum mechanics under unitary time evolution. A possible application of these concepts is an approach to high-$T_c$ superconductivity based (a) on the nonlocal nature of the electron (1-fold selfintersecting center-vortex loop) and (b) on planar curve-shrinking flow representing the decrease in thermal noise in a cooling cuprate.