Topological structure in the SU(2) vacuum

We study the topological content of the vacuum of SU(2) pure gauge theory using lattice simulations. We use a smoothing process based on the renormalization group equation which removes short distance fluctuations but preserves long distance structure. The action of the smoothed configurations is dominated by instantons, but they still show an area law for Wilson loops with a string tension equal to the string tension on the original configurations. Yet it appears that instantons are not directly responsible for confinement. The average radius of an instanton is about 0.2 fm, at a density of about 2 fm(-4). This is a much smaller average size than other lattice studies have indicated, The instantons appear not to be randomly distributed in space, but are clustered. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.