Short Strings in the Abelian Higgs Model

We consider the monopole–antimonopole static potential in the confining phase of the Abelian Higgs model and in particular the corrections to the Coulomb-like potential at small distances r. By minimizing numerically the classical energy functional, we observe a linear in r, stringy correction even at distances much smaller than the apparent physical scales. We argue that this term is a manifestation of the condition that the monopoles are connected by a mathematically thin line along which the scalar field vanishes. These short strings modify the operator product expansion as well. Implications for QCD are discussed.