An interacting instanton and anti-instanton system under external color magnetic fields

Abstract

The equilibrium configurations for the instanton and anti-instanton system of the SU(2) gauge field under constant external color magnetic fields are studied by applying the statistical mechanics method. The vacuum has a stable equilibrium state in the case where the interaction between pseudoparticles is partly considered through the local gauge field in determining the mean dipole moment of instantons. It is shown, however, that there exists no equilibrium state, either stable or unstable, when the dipolar interaction with a particular instanton-size-dependent cutoff is taken into account directly by the second virial coefficient. To analyze this discrepancy a more general cutoff is introduced and the density of instantons is determined for equilibrium states with vanishing external fields, when the cutoff parameter is varied. Above a certain cutoff length there exist two branches of equilibrium configurations with high or low instanton densities, while below it no equilibrium state is obtained. It is shown that we have a critical cutoff length near but slightly larger than the above value and that the equilibrium states on the lower density branch corresponding to cutoff lengths larger than this critical value are stable, while all remaining equilibrium states are unstable.