A new model for confinement

We propose a new approach towards the understanding of confinement. Starting from an anisotropic five-dimensional pure gauge theory, we approach a second order phase transition where the system reduces dimensionally. Dimensional reduction is realized via localization of the gauge and scalar degrees of freedom on four-dimensional branes. The gauge coupling deriving from the brane Wilson loop observable runs like an asymptotically free coupling at short distance, while it exhibits clear signs of string formation at long distance. The regularization used is the lattice. We take the continuum limit by keeping the ratio of the lattice spacing in the brane over the lattice spacing along the extra dimension constant and smaller than one. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.