Confinement, Turbulence and Diffraction Catastrophes Original Research Article

Many features of the large Nc transition that occurs in the spectral density of Wilson loops as a function of loop area (observed recently in numerical simulations of Yang-Mills theory by Narayanan and Neuberger) can be captured by a simple Burgers equation used to model turbulence. Spectral shock waves that precede this asymptotic limit exhibit universal scaling with Nc, with indices that can be related to Berry indices for diffraction catastrophes.