Center vortex and confinement in Yang–Mills theory and QCD with anomaly-preserving compactifications

Abstract We construct an anomaly-preserving compactification of 4D gauge theories, including SU (N) Yang–Mills theory, N=1 supersymmetric Yang–Mills theory, and quantum chromodynamics (QCD), down to 2D by turning on the ’t Hooft flux through T2. This provides a new framework to analytically calculate nonperturbative properties such as confinement, chiral symmetry breaking, and the multi-branch structure of vacua. We give a semiclassical description of these phenomena based on the center vortex and show that it enjoys the same anomaly-matching condition as the original 4D gauge theory. We conjecture that the weak-coupling vacuum structure on small T² R² is adiabatically connected to the strong-coupling regime on R⁴ without any phase transitions. In QCD with fundamental quarks as well, we can turn on the ’t Hooft flux either by activating the SU (Nf) V symmetry twist for Nf = N flavors or by introducing a magnetic flux of baryon number U (1) B for arbitrary Nf flavors. In both cases, the weak-coupling center-vortex theory gives a prediction consistent with the chiral Lagrangian of 4D QCD.