VORTICES AND CONFINEMENT AT WEAK-COUPLING

We discuss the physical picture of thick vortices as the mechanism res ponsible for confinement at arbitrarily weak coupling in SU(2) gauge t heory. By introducing appropriate variables on the lattice we distingu ish between thin, thick and ''hybrid'' vortices, the latter involving Z(2) monopole loop boundaries. We present numerical lattice simulation results that demonstrate that the full SU(2) string tension at weak c oupling arises from the presence of vortices linked to the Wilson loop . Conversely, excluding linked vortices eliminates the confining poten tial. The numerical results are stable under an alternate choice of la ttice action as well as a smoothing procedure which removes short dist ance fluctuations while preserving long distance physics.[S0556-2821(9 8)02109-2].