Gauge turbulence, topological defect dynamics, and condensation in Higgs models

Understand

The real-time dynamics of topological defects and turbulent configurations of gauge fields for electric and magnetic confinement are studied numerically within a 2+1D Abelian Higgs model.

• It is shown that confinement is appearing in such systems equilibrating after a strong initial quench such as the overpopulation of the infrared modes.
• While the final equilibrium state does not support confinement, metastable vortex defect configurations appear in the gauge field which are found to be closely related to the appearance of physically observable confined electric and magnetic charges.
• These phenomena are seen to be intimately related to the approach of a non-thermal fixed point of the far-from-equilibrium dynamical evolution, signalled by universal scaling in the gauge-invariant correlation function of the Higgs field.