Numerical evidence for fractional topological objects in SU(3) gauge theory

The continued development of models that propose the existence of fractional topological objects in the Yang-Mills vacuum has called for a quantitative method to study the topological structure of <a:math xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><a:mrow><a:mi>SU</a:mi><a:mo stretchy="false">(</a:mo><a:mi>N</a:mi><a:mo stretchy="false">)</a:mo></a:mrow></a:math> gauge theory. We present an original numerical algorithm that can identify distinct topological objects in the nontrivial ground-state fields and approximate the net charge contained within them. This analysis is performed for SU(3) color at a range of temperatures crossing the deconfinement phase transition, allowing for an assessment of how the topological structure evolves with temperature. We find a promising consistency with the instanton-dyon model for the structure of the QCD vacuum at finite temperature. Several other quantities, such as object density and radial size, are also analyzed to elicit a further understanding of the fundamental structure of ground-state gluon fields.