title: Meron pairs and fermion zero modes
abstract: Merons, conjectured as a semiclassical mechanism for color confinement in QCD, have been described analytically by either infinite action configurations or an Ansatz with discontinuous action. We construct a smooth, finite action, stationary lattice solution corresponding to a meron pair. We also derive an analytical solution for the zero mode of the meron pair Ansatz, show that it has the qualitative behavior of the exact zero mode of the lattice solution, and propose the use of zero modes to identify meron gauge field configurations in stochastic evaluations of the lattice QCD path integral.
authors.affiliation: Center for Theoretical Physics, Laboratory for Nuclear Science, and Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.
authors.initials: JV
authors.lastname: Steele
authors.initials: JW
authors.lastname: Negele