Confinement, String Breaking, and Hadronization in the Compact Abelian Higgs Model
Abstract
While real-time simulation of Quantum Chromodynamics remains technologically out of reach, many simplified models for studying elements of QCD phenomenology are being investigated. In this work, we present a simple model, a spin-1 truncation of the Compact Abelian Higgs Model simulated on qutrit sites, in which confinement and string breaking are accessible to current simulation methods. In the low-energy regime of 1+1 dimensional scalar electrodynamics, the heavy modes are integrated out, producing a spin chain effective Hamiltonian in which Gauss' law is automatically satisfied. We study the spectrum of string-like excitations using DMRG methods on the order of 100 sites. We demonstrate that an added, local chemical potential, playing a role analogous to external charges, permits parameter-dependent measurements of physical features of interest like the string tension and effective meson mass. Varying the chemical potential also permits a characterization of string stability not assessed in prior studies of confining lattice models.
Related
- Quantum Simulation of Hadronization: From String Breaking to Event Generation
- Quantum Simulations of Two-Dimensional Non-Abelian Adjoint String Breaking
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BibTeX
@misc{senseman2026confinement,
title = {{Confinement, String Breaking, and Hadronization in the Compact Abelian Higgs Model}},
author = {Blake Senseman and Zane Ozzello and Yannick Meurice and Stephen Mrenna},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2607.27550},
eprint = {2607.27550},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.27550},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Confinement, String Breaking, and Hadronization in the Compact Abelian Higgs Model
AU - Blake Senseman
AU - Zane Ozzello
AU - Yannick Meurice
AU - Stephen Mrenna
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/25
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2607.27550
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.27550
AB - While real-time simulation of Quantum Chromodynamics remains technologically out of reach, many simplified models for studying elements of QCD phenomenology are being investigated. In this work, we present a simple model, a spin-1 truncation of the Compact Abelian Higgs Model simulated on qutrit sites, in which confinement and string breaking are accessible to current simulation methods. In the low-energy regime of 1+1 dimensional scalar electrodynamics, the heavy modes are integrated out, producing a spin chain effective Hamiltonian in which Gauss' law is automatically satisfied. We study the spectrum of string-like excitations using DMRG methods on the order of 100 sites. We demonstrate that an added, local chemical potential, playing a role analogous to external charges, permits parameter-dependent measurements of physical features of interest like the string tension and effective meson mass. Varying the chemical potential also permits a characterization of string stability not assessed in prior studies of confining lattice models.
ER -