A Stable Magnetic Background in SU(2) QCD

Abstract

Motivated by the instability of the Savvidy-Nielsen-Olesen (SNO) vacuum we make a systematic search for a stable magnetic background in pure SU(2) QCD. It is shown that Wu-Yang monopole-antimonopole pair is unstable under vacuum fluctuations. However, it is shown that a pair of axially symmetric monopole-antimonopole string configuration is stable, provided the distance between the two strings is small enough (less than a critical value). The existence of a stable monopole-antimonopole string background strongly supports that a magnetic condensation of monopole-antimonopole pairs can indeed generate a dynamical symmetry breaking, and thus a desired magnetic confinement of color, in QCD.