The Vortex-Finding Property of Maximal Center (and Other) Gauges

We argue that the “vortex-finding” property of maximal center gauge, i.e. the ability of this gauge to locate center vortices inserted by hand on any given lattice, is the key to its success in extracting the vortex content of thermalized lattice configurations. We explain how this property comes about, and why it is expected not only in maximal center gauge, but also in an infinite class of gauge conditions based on adjoint-representation link variables. In principle, the vortex-finding property can be foiled by Gribov copies. This fact is relevant to a gauge-fixing procedure devised by Kovács and Tomboulis, where we show that the loss of center dominance, found in their procedure, is explained by a corresponding loss of the vortex-finding property. The association of center dominance with the vortex-finding property is demonstrated numerically in a number of other gauges.