Vortices and bags in 2+1 dimensions - art. no. 045009

We consider the effect of the (heavy) fundamental quarks on the low energy effective Lagrangian description of non-Abelian gauge theories in 2+1 dimen sions. We show that in the presence of the fundamental charges, the magneti c Z(N) symmetry becomes local. We construct the effective Lagrangian repres enting this local symmetry in terms of magnetic vortex fields, and discuss its physical consequences. We show that the finite energy states described by this Lagrangian have distinct bag-like structure. The point-like quarks are confined to the region of space where the value of the vortex field is much smaller than in the surrounding vacuum.