Why is the strong force strong? What topology tells us about quark interactions

by Chris Allton (Swansea University)

Wednesday 11 Nov 2026, 10:00 → 11:00 Europe/Zurich

4/2-037 - TH meeting room (CERN)

Understanding the cause of confinement in QCD is one of the central, unsolved problems in particle physics. A compelling explanation can be constructed using centre vortices, topological structures in the gluon fields analogous to the twist in a Möbius strip. In earlier work, we revealed three “phases” of QCD with two transition temperatures. The first is the usual chiral transition, $T_c$, and the second at $T_d\sim 1.9T_c$ has deconfinement properties. In this work, we find that topological data analysis applied to the centre vortex sheets can distinguish these phases. Below $T_c$, vortex sheets are highly crumpled and topological features are temperature invariant. In the warm “phase” between $T_c$ and $T_d$, the topology of the vortex sheets has modest changes and there are the first signs of anisotropy. Above $T_d$ there is a dramatic change in the centre vortex sheets’ topology. Percolation properties change, vortex sheets are temporally aligned, and the area law is lost, signally deconfinement.