From QCD to Dual Superconductivity to Effective String Theory

Abstract

We show how an effective field theory of long distance QCD, describing a dual superconductor, can be expressed as an effective string theory of superconducting vortices. We use the semiclassical expansion of this effective string theory about a classical rotating string solution in any spacetime dimension D to obtain the semiclassical meson energy spectrum. We argue that the experimental data on Regge trajectories along with numerical simulations of the heavy quark potentials provide good evidence for an effective string description of long distance QCD.

Talk given at the 5th International Conference on Quark Confinement and the Hadron Spectrum, Gargnano, Italy, September 2002