Monte Carlo evidence for the gluon-chain model of QCD string formation

The Monte Carlo method is used to calculate the overlaps <Ψstringvertical stroken gluons>, where Ψstring[A] is the Yang-Mills wavefunctional due to a static quark-antiquark pair, and vertical stroken gluons > are orthogonal trial states containing n=0, 1, or 2 gluon operators multiplying the true ground state. The calculation is carried out for SU(2) lattice gauge theory in Coulomb gauge, in D=4 dimensions. It is found that the string state is dominated, at small qanti q separations, by the vacuum ('no-gluon') state, at larger separations by the 1-gluon state, and, at the largest separations attempted, the 2-gluon state begins to dominate. This behavior is in qualitative agreement with the gluon-chain model, which is a large-Ncolors motivated theory of QCD string formation. (orig.)