Some universal features of the effective string picture of pure gauge theories

The effective string describing the large distance behaviour of the quark sources of gauge field theories in the confining phase in D=3 or D=4 space-time dimensions can be formulated, in the infrared limit, as a suitable 2D conformal field theory on surfaces with quark loops as boundaries. Recent results on self-avoiding random surfaces allow to fix almost uniquely such a conformal theory. As a consequence, some universal relationships among the string tension , the thickness of the colour flux tube, the deconfinement temperature and a lower bound of the glueball mass spectrum are found. The general agreement with the data extracted from recent lattice simulations with different gauge groups is rather impressive.(Talk held by F.Gliozzi at Lattice'92 , Amsterdam)