Violation of Casimir scaling for static QCD potential at three-loop order Original Research Article

We compute the full image and image corrections to the potential image between the static color sources, where image is defined from the Wilson loop in a general representation R of a general gauge group G. We find a violation of the Casimir scaling of the potential, for the first time, at image. The effect of the Casimir scaling violation is predicted to reduce the tangent of image proportionally to specific color factors dependent on R. We study the sizes of the Casimir scaling violation for various Rʹs in the case image. We find that they are well within the present bounds from lattice calculations, in the distance region where both perturbative and lattice computations of image are valid. We also discuss how to test the Casimir scaling violating effect.