Double-winding Wilson loops and monopole confinement mechanisms

Abstract: We consider "double-winding" Wilson loops in SU(2) gauge theory. These are contours which wind once around a loop $C_1$ and once around a loop $C_2$, where the two co-planar loops share one point in common, and where $C_1$ lies entirely in (or is displaced slightly from) the minimal area of $C_2$. We discuss the expectation value of such double-winding loops in abelian confinement pictures, where the spatial distribution of confining abelian fields is controlled by either a monopole Coulomb gas, a caloron ensemble, or a dual abelian Higgs model, and argue that in such models an exponential falloff in the sum of areas $A_1+A_2$ is expected. In contrast, in a center vortex model of confinement, the behavior is an exponential falloff in the difference of areas $A_2-A_1$. We compute such double-winding loops by lattice Monte Carlo simulation, and find that the area law falloff follows a difference-in-areas law. The conclusion is that even if confining gluonic field fluctuations are, in some gauge, mainly abelian in character, the spatial distribution of those abelian fields cannot be the distribution predicted by the simple monopole gas, caloron ensemble, or dual abelian Higgs actions, which have been used in the past to explain the area law falloff of Wilson loops.