Visualizations of the Qcd Vacuum

The numerical approach to resolving the features of QCD is occasionally criticized via statements suggesting the knowledge of QCD lies “in the silicon.” What these speakers are recognizing is that there are massive amounts of data processed by today’s supercomputers in arriving at the final few bytes of information reported as QCD observables. The focus of this investigation is to further probe the features of QCD by using visualization techniques which efficiently convey the content of these massive amounts of data. Here we will examine the properties of typical pure-gauge QCD-vacuum field configurations created on a 24×36 space-time lattice using the standard Wilson action at β = 6.0, which provides a lattice spacing of 0.1 fm. In addition, we consider an O(a)-improved action on a 16 × 32 lattice at β = 4.38 providing a lattice spacing of 0.17 fm. To remove the short-range noisy perturbative fluctuations, the field configurations are smoothed by a local algorithm designed to minimize the gauge action at each update. This algorithm known as cooling 1 is a well established method for locally suppressing quantum fluctuations. The locality of the method allows topologically nontrivial field configurations to survive numerous iterations of the cooling algorithm. Visualization techniques may be used to answer questions such as the following: To what extent do the QCD vacuum field configurations resemble a