/ 98 06 03 7 v 1 4 J un 1 99 8 Two - dimensional QCD , instanton contributions and the perturbative Wu - Mandelstam - Leibbrandt prescription

The exact Wilson loop expression for the pure Yang-Mills U (N) theory on a sphere S 2 of radius R exhibits, in the decompactification limit R → ∞, the expected pure area exponentiation. This behaviour can be understood as due to the sum over all instanton sectors. If only the zero instanton sector is considered, in the decompactification limit one exactly recovers the sum of the perturbative series in which the light-cone gauge Yang-Mills propagator is prescribed according to Wu-Mandelstam-Leibbrandt. When instantons are disregarded, no pure area exponentiation occurs, the string tension is different and, in the large-N limit, confinement is lost.