Vacuum expectation value of a Wegner–Wilson loop near the light-cone

Abstract

Vacuum expectation values for one Wegner–Wilson loop representing a moving quark–antiquark pair are calculated in four-dimensional Euclidean and Minkowski space–time. The calculation uses gluon field strength correlators with perturbative gluon exchange and non-perturbative correlations from the stochastic vacuum model. The expectation value of a Wegner–Wilson loop forming a hyperbolic angle in Minkowski space–time is connected by an analytical continuation to the expectation value of the Wegner–Wilson loop in Euclidean four-space. The obtained result shows how confinement enters into the light-cone Hamiltonian for valence quarks independently of the chosen model.