Talk:Wilson loop

Untitled

Isn't a Wilson loop the path ordered product taken over a closed path and which is then traced over (i.e. its character for some irreducible rep) (resulting in a complex number) while a Wilson line the corresponding untraced (so it still takes on values in the gauge Lie group) product over a path which needn't be closed in general? Wilson lines can be contracted with charged fields at both of its endpoints to give a complex number. Phys 19:28, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)

This article is so technical that the only people benefiting from it would already know... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.21.103.36 (talk) 05:49, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure what is "much debated" meant to imply with regard to the quark gluon plasma?

Complete rewrite

Rewrote the entire article, significantly extending it in all directions. After having done as much research as I could, I think that the resulting article is very comprehensive, touching on all the major properties and applications of Wilson loops. The sections of the Makeenko–Migdal equation and the one on the Mandelstam identities should in the future get their own articles, although the summary of them presented in this article should be kept. I'll keep a running tab on additional possible extensions to this article:

• Their role in non-commutative gauge theory (See Makeenko's textbook Chapter 16),
• Their supersymmetric generalizations and their role in the AdS/CFT correspondance
• Generalized symmetries.

Also some additional images can be added. OpenScience709 (talk) 22:41, 5 June 2022 (UTC)