Heavy quark potential in the instanton liquid model

Abstract We study the heavy quark potential in the instanton liquid model by carefully measuring Wilson loops out to a distance of order 3 fm . A random instanton ensemble with a fixed radius ρ = 1 3 fm generates a potential V ( R ) growing very slowly at large R . In contrast, a more realistic size distribution growing as ρ 6 at small ρ and decaying as ρ −5 at large ρ, leads to a potential which grows linearly with R . The string tension, however, is only about 1 10 of the phenomenological value.