0 v 4 5 A ug 1 99 9 ITEP - TH - 73 / 98 FISIST / 16 - 98 / CFIF SMALL - SIZE STRINGS IN ABELIAN HIGGS MODEL

We consider monopole-antimonopole static potential in the confining phase of the Abelian Higgs model and concentrate on the correction to the Coulomb-like potential at short distances r. By minimising numerically the classical energy functional we observe a linear in r correction so that a string-tension term survives even at distances much smaller than apparent physical scales. We argue that this term is a manifestation of the condition that the monopoles are connected by a line along which the vacuum is trivial. Possible implications for QCD are briefly discussed.