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The negatively-charged nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond has been shown recently as an excellent sensor for external spins. Nevertheless, their optimum engineering in the near-surface region still requires quantitative knowledge in regard to their activation by vacancy capture during thermal annealing. To this aim, we report on the depth profiles of near-surface helium-induced NV centers (and related helium defects) by step-etching with nanometer resolution. This provides insights into the efficiency of vacancy diffusion and recombination paths concurrent to the formation of NV centers. It was found that the range of efficient formation of NV centers is limited only to approximately $10$ to $15\,$nm (radius) around the initial ion track of irradiating helium atoms. Using this information we demonstrate the fabrication of nanometric-thin ($\delta$) profiles of NV centers for sensing external spins at the diamond surface based on a three-step approach, which comprises (i) nitrogen-doped epitaxial CVD diamond overgrowth, (ii) activation of NV centers by low-energy helium irradiation and thermal annealing, and (iii) controlled layer thinning by low-damage plasma etching. Spin coherence times (Hahn echo) ranging up to $50\,$ $\mu$s are demonstrated at depths of less than $5\,$nm in material with $1.1\,\%$ of $^{13}$C (depth estimated by spin relaxation (T$_1$) measurements). At the end, the limits of the helium irradiation technique at high ion fluences are also experimentally investigated., Comment: 27 pages, 10 figures

Radial excitations of the quark-antiquark string sweeping the Wilson-loop area are considered in the framework of the effective-action formalism. Identifying these excitations with the daughter Regge trajectories, we find corrections which they produce to the constituent quark mass. The energy of the quark-antiquark pair turns out to be mostly saturated by the constituent quark masses, rather than by the elongation of the quark-antiquark string. Specifically, while the constituent quark mass turns out to increase as the square root of the radial-excitation quantum number, the energy of the string increases only as the fourth root of that number., Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures, talk given at the International Workshop on QCD Green's Functions, Confinement and Phenomenology, 5-9 September 2011, Trento, Italy

Formation of stable domains filled with strongly correlated coherent quark matter is discussed in general terms and is exemplified further in the framework of the Generalised Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model. It is argued that such domains, if exist in the Universe, appear dark to an external observer., Comment: LaTeX2e, 5 pages, uses jetpl.cls (included), to appear in JETP Lett

We suggest the possibility of creation in the early Universe of stable domains of radius a few kilometers wide, formed by coherently excited states of $\pi$-mesons. Such domains appear dark to an external observer, since the decay rate of the said coherent pionic states into photons is vanishingly small. The related thermal insulation of the domains from the outer world could have allowed them to survive till present days. The estimated maximum radius and the period of rotation of such objects turn out to be compatible with those of certain pulsars., Comment: 30 pages, 4 figures

The quark condensate is calculated in terms of the effective string tension and the constituent quark mass. For 3 colors and 2 light flavors, the constituent mass is bounded from below by the value of 460 MeV. This value is only accessible when the string tension decreases linearly with the Schwinger proper time. For this reason, the Hausdorff dimension of a light-quark trajectory is equal to 4, indicating that these trajectories are similar to branched polymers, which can describe a weak first-order deconfinement phase transition in SU(3) Yang-Mills theory. Using this indication, we develop a gluon-chain model based on such trajectories., Comment: 27 pages, 5 figures

We explore the thermodynamics of the gluon plasma in SU(3) Yang-Mills theory emerging from the non-trivial spatial dynamics of valence gluons. The lattice data suggest that these gluons interact with each other linearly at large spatial separations. At high temperatures, valence gluons should reproduce the pressure of the non-interacting Stefan-Boltzmann plasma along with the leading perturbative correction. These properties of valence gluons can be modeled in terms of the integral over their trajectories. We calculate such a world-line integral analytically and obtain the pressure and the interaction measure $(\varepsilon-3p)/T^4$ of the gluon plasma. Additionally, we account for the contributions of stochastic background fields to these thermodynamic quantities. The results turn out to be in a good agreement with the corresponding lattice data. In particular, the lattice-simulated peak of the interaction measure near the deconfinement critical temperature is reproduced., Comment: 20 pages, 5 figures. Final version. To appear in Nucl. Phys. A

This writeup is a compilation of the predictions for the forthcoming Heavy Ion Program at the Large Hadron Collider, as presented at the CERN Theory Institute 'Heavy Ion Collisions at the LHC - Last Call for Predictions', held from May 14th to June 10th 2007., Comment: LaTeX, 185 pages, uses iop styles; writeup of the CERN Theory Institute 'Heavy Ion Collisions at the LHC - Last Call for Predictions', held from May 14th to June 10th 2007

We argue that the radiative energy loss of a parton traversing the quark-gluon plasma is determined by Landau damping of soft modes in the plasma. Using this idea, we calculate the jet quenching parameter of a gluon. The calculation is done in SU(3) quenched QCD within the stochastic vacuum model. At the LHC-relevant temperatures, the result depends on the gluon condensate, the vacuum correlation length, and the gluon Debye mass. Numerically, when the temperature varies from T=T_c to T=900 MeV, the jet quenching parameter rises from \hat q=0 to approximately 1.8 GeV^2/fm. We compare our results with the predictions of perturbative QCD and other calculations., Comment: 20 pages, 6 figures, discussions and references added; final version to appear in Eur. Phys. J. C

Using a parametrization of the Wilson loop with the minimal-area law, we calculate the polarization operator of a valence gluon, which propagates in the confining background. This enables us to obtain the infrared freezing (i.e. finiteness) of the running strong coupling in the confinement phase, as well as in the deconfinement phase up to the temperature of dimensional reduction. The momentum scale defining the onset of freezing is found both analytically and numerically. The nonperturbative contribution to the thrust variable, originating from the freezing, makes the value of this variable closer to the experimental one., Comment: 25 pages, 5 figures

Thermodynamics of a heavy quark-antiquark pair in SU(3)-QCD is studied both below and above the deconfinement critical temperature $T_c$. In the quenched case, a model of the string passing through heavy valence gluons yields a correct estimate of $T_c$ and the critical behavior of the string tension below $T_c$. For two light flavors, entropy and internal energy below $T_c$ can be obtained from the partition function of heavy-light mesons and baryons. To calculate the free energy of the system above $T_c$, we apply second-order perturbation theory in the interaction of the quark-gluon plasma constituents with the static quark-antiquark pair. The results for the entropy and internal energy, obtained both below and above $T_c$, are compared with recent lattice data., Comment: 27 pages, 16 figures; minor comments and references are added; version to appear in Nuclear Physics A

Thermodynamics of a heavy quark-antiquark pair in SU(3)-QCD is studied below the deconfinement critical temperature, $T_c$. In the quenched case, a model of the string passing through heavy valence gluons yields a correct estimate of $T_c$ and a behavior of the string tension near $T_c$. For two light flavors, entropy and internal energy can be obtained from the partition function of heavy-light mesons and baryons. They are in a good qualitative agreement with the lattice results., Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, uses espcrc2.sty; talk given at the 13th International Conference in QCD (QCD06), Montpellier, France, 3-7 July 2006

Effects of dispersion of the chromoelectric field of the flux tube on the string-breaking distance are studied. The leading-order correction is shown to slightly diminish the result following from the Schwinger formula. Instead, accounting for corrections of all orders might result, at certain values of the Landau-Ginzburg parameter, in an increase of the string-breaking distance up to one order of magnitude. An alternative formula for this distance is obtained when produced pairs are treated as holes in a confining pellicle, which spans over the contour of an external quark-antiquark pair. Generalizations of the obtained results to the cases of small temperatures, as well as temperatures close to the critical one are also discussed., Comment: 21 pages, no figures, uses JHEP3.cls

In this review, we discuss the confining and finite-temperature properties of the 3D SU(N) Georgi-Glashow model, and of 4D compact QED. At zero temperature, we derive string representations of both theories, thus constructing the SU(N)-version of Polyakov's theory of confining strings. We discuss the geometric properties of confining strings, as well as the appearance of the string theta-term from the field-theoretical one in 4D, and k-string tensions at N larger than 2. In particular, we point out the relevance of negative stiffness for stabilizing confining strings, an effect recently re-discovered in material science. At finite temperature, we present a derivation of the confining-string free energy and show that, at the one-loop level and for a certain class of string models in the large-D limit, it matches that of QCD at large N. This crucial matching is again a consequence of the negative stiffness. In the discussion of the finite-temperature properties of the 3D Georgi-Glashow model, in order to be closer to QCD, we mostly concentrate at the effects produced by some extensions of the model by external matter fields, such as dynamical fundamental quarks or photinos, in the supersymmetric generalization of the model., Comment: 79 pages, LaTeX2e, uses ws-procs975x65.cls, no figures, minor editorial corrections are included. To be published in the Ian Kogan Memorial Collection "From Fields to Strings: Circumnavigating Theoretical Physics", World Scientific, 2004

We study the finite-temperature properties of the supersymmetric version of (2+1)D Georgi-Glashow model. As opposed to its nonsupersymmetric counterpart, the parity symmetry in this theory at zero temperature is spontaneously broken by the bilinear photino condensate. We find that as the temperature is raised, the deconfinement and the parity restoration occur in this model at the same point $T_c=g^2/8\pi$. The transition is continuous, but is not of the Ising type as in nonsupersymmetric Georgi-Glashow model, but rather of the Berezinsky-Kosterlitz-Thouless type as in $Z_4$-invariant spin model., Comment: 8 pages, LaTeX2e, no figures

We present a model for string breaking based on the existence of chromoelectric flux tubes. We predict the form of the long-range potential, and obtain an estimate of the string breaking length. A prediction is also obtained for the behaviour with temperature of the string breaking length near the deconfinement phase transition. We plan to use this model as a guide for a program of study of string breaking on the lattice., Comment: 7 pages, minor improvements of the text and of the reference list

(2+1)-dimensional Georgi-Glashow model, else called the Polyakov model, is explored at nonzero temperatures and in the regime when the Higgs boson is not infinitely heavy. The finiteness of the Higgs-boson mass leads to the appearance of the upper bound on the parameter of the weak-coupling approximation, necessary to maintain the stochasticity of the Higgs vacuum. The modification of the finite-temperature behavior of the model emerging due to the introduction of massless quarks is also discussed., Comment: 4 pages, LaTeX2e, no figures, uses espcrc2.sty, submitted to Nucl. Phys. B (Proc. Suppl.)

Making use of the duality transformation, we construct string representation for the partition function of the London limit of Abelian Higgs Model with an additional axionic term. In the lowest order of perturbation theory, this term leads to the appearance in the resulting string effective action of a new threelocal interaction between the elements of the string world-sheet. Consequently, there emerges a threelocal correlator of the dual field strength tensors, which does not contain the average over world-sheets, and is therefore nontrivial even in the sector of the theory with a single small vortex. The relation between the obtained correlator and the bilocal one is established. Finally, it is argued that the vacuum structure of the London limit of the Abelian Higgs Model with an additional axionic interaction is much more similar to that of gluodynamics rather than without this interaction., Comment: 7 pages, LaTeX, no figures, final version to appear in Phys. Lett. B

By making use of the duality transformation, gauge field correlators of the Abelian Higgs Model are studied in the London limit. The obtained results are in a good agreement with the dual Meissner scenario of confinement and with the Stochastic Model of QCD vacuum. The nontrivial contribution to the quartic correlator arising due to accounting for the finiteness of the coupling constant is discussed., Comment: 10 pages, LaTeX, no figures, references are added

An effective string theory emerging from the bilocal approximation to the Method of Vacuum Correlators in gluodynamics is shown to be well described by the 4D theory of the massive Abelian Kalb-Ramond field interacting with the string, which is known to be the low-energy limit of the Universal Confining String Theory. The mass of the Kalb-Ramond field in this approach plays the role of the inverse correlation length of the vacuum, and it is shown that in the massless limit string picture disappears. The background field method, known in the theory of nonlinear sigma models, is applied to derivation of the effective action, quadratic in quantum fluctuations around a given (e.g. minimal) string world-sheet., Comment: 11 pages, LaTeX, no figures, 2 references are updated, to be published in Phys. Lett. B

A topological term related to the number of self-intersections of the string world-sheet is shown to emerge in the string representation of the Wilson loop in the dilute instanton gas. The coupling constant of this term occurs to be proportional to the topological charge of the instanton gas under consideration., Comment: 4 pages, LaTeX, no figures

The effects bringing about by the finiteness of the photon mass due to the Debye screening in the monopole gas in three-dimensional compact QED are studied. In this respect, a representation of the partition function of this theory as an integral over monopole densities is derived. Dual formulation of the Wilson loop yields a new theory of confining strings, which in the low-energy limit almost coincides with the one corresponding to the case when the photon is considered to be massless, whereas in the high-energy limit these two theories are quite different from each other. The confining string mass operator in the low-energy limit is also found, and its dependence on the volume of observation is studied., Comment: 7 pages, LaTeX, no figures, 1 reference is added, final version to appear in Phys. Lett. B

The one-loop free energy of the four-dimensional compact QED, which is known to be equivalent to the vector Sine-Gordon model, is calculated in the strong coupling regime. In the case, when the norm of the strength tensor of the saddle-point value of the corresponding Sine-Gordon model is much larger than the typical inverse area of a loop in the gas of the monopole rings, the obtained free energy decays exponentially versus this norm. In the opposite case, when the dominant configuration of the Sine-Gordon model is identically zero, the resulting free energy decays with the growth of loops as an exponent of the inverse square of their typical area., Comment: 4 pages, LaTeX, no figures

String representations of the Wilson loop and of the non-Abelian analog of the 't Hooft loop, defined on the string world-sheet, are studied in the Londons' limit of the 4D Georgi-Glashow model. In the first case, massive gauge bosons yield only perimeter type terms, whereas in the second case, they also interact with the string, which enables one to derive the coefficient functions parametrizing the bilocal correlator of the dual field strength tensors. The asymptotic behaviours of these functions at small and large distances are argued to be in a good agreement with the observable lattice data., Comment: 6 pages, LaTeX, no figures, a reference is added

The next-to-leading term in the weight factor of the string representation of the 't Hooft loop average defined on the string world-sheet is found in the Abelian Higgs Model near the Londons' limit. This term emerges due to the finiteness of the coupling constant and, in contrast to the Londons' limit, where only the bilocal cumulant in the expansion of the 't Hooft average survived, leads to the appearance of the quartic cumulant. Apart from the Londons' penetration depth of the vacuum, which was a typical fall-off scale of the bilocal cumulant, the quartic cumulant depends also on the other characteristic length of the Abelian Higgs Model, the correlation radius of the Higgs field., Comment: 5 pages, LaTeX, references are added

Making use of the duality transformation, we derive in the Londons' limit of the Abelian Higgs Model string representation for the 't Hooft loop average defined on the string world-sheet, which yields the values of two coefficient functions parametrizing the bilocal correlator of the dual field strength tensors. The asymptotic behaviours of these functions agree with the ones obtained within the Method of Vacuum Correlators in QCD in the lowest order of perturbation theory. We demonstrate that the bilocal approximation to the Method of Vacuum Correlators is an exact result in the Londons' limit, i.e. all the higher cumulants in this limit vanish. We also show that at large distances, apart from the integration over metrics, the obtained string effective theory (which in this case reduces to the nonlinear massive axionic sigma model) coincides with the low-energy limit of the dual version of 4D compact QED, the so-called Universal Confining String Theory. We derive string tension of the Nambu-Goto term and the coupling constant of the rigidity term for the obtained string effective theory and demonstrate that the latter one is always negative, which means the stability of strings, while the positiveness of the former is confirmed by the present lattice data. These data enable us to find the Higgs boson charge and the vacuum expectation value of the Higgs field, which model QCD best of all. We also study dynamics of the weight factor of the obtained string representation for the 't Hooft average in the loop space. In conclusion, we obtain string representation for the partition function of the correlators of an arbitrary number of Higgs currents, by virtue of which we rederive the structure of the bilocal correlator of the dual field strength tensors, which yields the surface term in the string effective action., Comment: 11 pages, LaTeX, no figures, references are added

The effective string theory emerging from the bilocal approximation to the Method of Vacuum Correlators in gluodynamics is shown to be well described by the 4D theory of the massive Abelian Kalb-Ramond field interacting with the string, which is known to be the low-energy limit of the Universal Confining String Theory. This correspondence follows from the agreement of the behaviour of the coefficient functions, which parametrize the gauge-invariant correlator of two gluonic field strength tensors, known from the lattice data, with their values obtained from the propagator of the Kalb-Ramond field. We discuss this correspondence in several aspects and demonstrate that the mass of the Kalb-Ramond field in this approach plays the role of the inverse correlation length of the vacuum, so that in the massless limit string picture disappears. Next, we apply the background field method, known in the theory of nonlinear sigma models, to obtain the action, which is quadratic in quantum fluctuations around a given (e.g. minimal) string world-sheet. Several nontrivial types of couplings of these fluctuations with the background world-sheet are obtained and discussed., Comment: 11 pages, LaTeX, no figures, references are added

Perturbation theory in the nonperturbative QCD vacuum and the non-Abelian Stokes theorem, representing a Wilson loop in the SU(2) gluodynamics as an integral over all the orientations in colour space, are applied to a derivation of the correction to the string effective action in the lowest order in the coupling constant $g$. This correction is due to the interaction of perturbative gluons with the string world sheet and affects only the coupling constant of the rigidity term, while its contribution to the string tension of the Nambu-Goto term vanishes. The obtained correction to the rigidity coupling constant multiplicatively depends on the colour "spin" of the representation of the Wilson loop under consideration and a certain path integral, which includes the background Wilson loop average., Comment: 9 pages, LaTeX, no figures

Perturbation theory in the nonperturbative QCD vacuum and the non-Abelian Stokes theorem, representing a Wilson loop in the SU(2) gluodynamics as an integral over all the orientations in colour space, are applied to derivation of the correction to the background-induced string effective action. This correction is due to accounting in the lowest order of perturbation theory for the interaction of perturbative gluons with the string world sheet. It occurs that this interaction affects only the coupling constant of the rigidity term, while its contribution to the string tension of the Nambu-Goto term vanishes. The obtained correction to the rigid string coupling constant multiplicatively depends on the spin of the representation of the Wilson loop under consideration, the QCD coupling constant and a certain path integral, which includes the background Wilson average., Comment: 8 pages, LaTeX, no figures

Starting with the representation of the Wilson average in the Euclidean 4D compact QED as a partition function of the Universal Confining String Theory, we derive for it the corresponding loop equation, alternative to the familiar one. In the functional momentum representation the obtained equation decouples into two independent ones, which describe the dynamics of the transverse and longitudinal components of the area derivative of the Wilson loop. At some critical value of the momentum discontinuity, which can be determined from a certain equation, the transverse component does not propagate. Next, we derive the equation for the momentum Wilson loop, where on the left-hand side stands the sum of the squares of the momentum discontinuities, multiplied by the loop, which describes its free propagation, while the right-hand side describes the interaction of the loop with the functional vorticity tensor current. Finally, using the method of inversion of the functional Laplacian, we obtain for the Wilson loop in the coordinate representation a simple Volterra type-II linear integral equation, which can be treated perturbatively., Comment: 7 pages, LaTeX, no figures, a remark is added

A correction to the Hamiltonian of the quark-antiquark system, arising due to the rigidity term in the gluodynamics string effective action, is obtained. This correction contains additional contributions to the orbital momentum of the system and several higher derivative operators. With the help of the derived Hamiltonian a rigid string-induced term in the Hamiltonian of the relativistic quark model is evaluated for the case of large masses of a quark and antiquark., Comment: 7 pages, LaTeX, no figures, minor corrections

Under certain conditions, imposed on the viscosity of the fluid, initial data and the class of contours under consideration, the Cauchy problem with finite values of time for the loop equation in turbulence with Gaussian random forces is solved by making use of the smearing procedure for the loop space functional Laplacian. The solution obtained depends on the initial data and its functional derivatives and on the potential of the random forces., Comment: 6 pages, LaTeX, no figures

The nonabelian Stokes theorem, representing a Wilson loop as an integral over all the orientations in colour space, and the cumulant expansion are used for derivation of the string effective action in SU(2) gluodynamics. The obtained theory is the theory of the rigid string interacting with the rank two antisymmetric Kalb-Ramond fields. In this model there exists a phase where there are no problems of crumpling and wrong high temperature behaviour of the string tension, which are present in the free rigid string theory. The Langevin approach to stochastic quantization of the obtained theory is applied., Comment: 7 pages

Stochastic quantization is applied to derivation of the equations for the Wilson loops and generating functionals of the Wilson loops in the large-N limit. These equations are treated both in the coordinate and momentum representations. In the first case the connection of the suggested approach with the problem of random closed contours and supersymmetric quantum mechanics is established, and the equation for the Quenched Master Field Wilson loop is derived. The regularized version of one of the obtained equations is presented and applied to derivation of the equation for the bilocal field correlator. The momentum loop dynamics is also investigated., Comment: 13 pages

Using cumulant expansion for an averaged Wilson loop we derive an action of the gluodynamics string in the form of a series in powers of the correlation length of the vacuum. In the lowest orders it contains the Nambu-Goto term and the rigidity term with the coupling constants computed from the bilocal correlator of gluonic fields. Some higher derivative corrections are calculated., Comment: 10 pages