Vortices and the SU(3) string tension

We present simulation results comparing the SU(3) heavy quark potential ext racted from the full Wilson loop expectation to that extracted from the exp ectation of the Wilson loop fluctuation solely by elements of Z(3). The two potentials are found to coincide. This agreement is stable under multiple smoothings of the configurations which remove short distance fluctuations, and thus reflects long-distance physics. It strongly indicates that the asy mptotic string tension arises from thick center vortices linking with the W ilson loop. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.