Bound on the string tension by the excitation probability for a vortex

A lower bound on the string tension for large beta in SU(2) LGT is derived. The derivation is from first principles and bounds the string tension from below by the expectation for the excitation of a single `tagged' thick vortex winding around the lattice. Thus confinement follows if this expectation remains nonvanishing at large beta. Numerical simulations are presented to show that this is indeed the case.