Screening of the topological charge in a correlated instanton vacuum

Screening of the topological charge due to he fermion-induced interactions is an important phenomenon, closely related with the resolution of the strong CP and U(1) problems. We study the mechanism of such screening in a 'correlated instanton vacuum', as opposed to the 'random' one. Both scalar and pseudoscalar gluonic correlators are analyzed by means of an observable that minimizes finite size effects. Screening of the topological charge is established. This allows us to calculate the $\eta'$ mass without having to invert the Dirac operator. We suggest that this method might be used in lattice QCD calculations as well. Our results for the screening of the topological charge are in agreement with the chiral Ward identities, and the scalar gluonic correlator satisfies a low energy theorem first derived by Novikov et al. \cite{Novikov-etal}. We also propose to evaluate the topological susceptibility in the Witten-Veneziano formula not in an infinite box in an world $without$ fermions but in an infinitesimal box in a world $with$ fermions.