title: Width of the confining string in Yang-Mills theory.
abstract: We investigate the transverse fluctuations of the confining string connecting two static quarks in (2+1)D SU(2) Yang-Mills theory using Monte Carlo calculations. The exponentially suppressed signal is extracted from the large noise by a very efficient multilevel algorithm. The resulting width of the string increases logarithmically with the distance between the static quark charges. Corrections at intermediate distances due to universal higher-order terms in the effective string action are calculated analytically. They accurately fit the numerical data.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Fisica Teorica, Università di Torino, and INFN, Sezione di Torino, via P. Giuria 1, 10125 Torino, Italy.
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Gliozzi
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Pepe
authors.forename: U-J
authors.initials: UJ
authors.lastname: Wiese