Topological structure of the SU(3) vacuum and exceptional eigenmodes of the improved Wilson-Dirac operator☆

Abstract We present a study of the instanton size and spatial distributions in pure SU(3) gauge theory using under-relaxed cooling. We also investigate the low-lying eigenmodes of the (improved) Wilson-Dirac operator, in particular, the appearance of zero-modes and their space-time localisation with respect to instantons in the underlying gauge field.