A three-dimensional effective theory of Polyakov loops has recently been derived from Wilson's Yang-Mills lattice action by means of a strong coupling expansion. It is valid in the confined phase up to the deconfinement phase transition, for which it predicts the correct order and gives quantitative estimates for the critical coupling. In this work we study its predictive power for further observables like correlation functions and the equation of state. We find that the effective theory correctly reproduces qualitative features and symmetries of the full theory as the continuum is approached. Regarding quantitative predictions, we identify two classes of observables by numerical comparison as well as analytic calculations: correlation functions and their associated mass scales cannot be described accurately from a truncated effective theory, due to its inherently non-local nature involving long-range couplings. On the other hand, phase transitions and bulk thermodynamic quantities are accurately reproduced by the leading local part of the effective theory. In particular, the effective theory description is numerically superior when computing the equation of state at low temperatures or the properties of the phase transition.
We consider the expectation value of a Polyakov loop in 3d SU(2) lattice Yang--Mills theory and transform it to the dual representation in terms of sums over spins. The spin dependence of the amplitudes is computed explicitly by a graphical method. We also determine the asymptotic (large spin) limit of the amplitude factors.
Effective Polyakov loop theories are a useful tool for an investigation of pure Yang-Mills theory and full QCD. A systematic derivation of the effective action can be done in a spatial strong coupling expansion. Quite accurate predictions for the deconfinement phase transition of Yang-Mills theory have been obtained in this approach. Besides the critical couplings, further observables can be measured in the effective theory. These provide additional tests for the reliability of the strong coupling approach and the truncation of the effective action. In this contribution we will present recent …
Lattice Yang-Mills theories at finite temperature can be mapped onto effective 3d spin systems, thus facilitating their numerical investigation. Using strong-coupling expansions we derive effective actions for Polyakov loops in the $SU(2)$ and $SU(3)$ cases and investigate the effect of higher order corrections. Once a formulation is obtained which allows for Monte Carlo analysis, the nature of the phase transition in both classes of models is investigated numerically, and the results are then used to predict -- with an accuracy within a few percent -- the deconfinement point in the original 4…
We consider a three-dimensional effective theory of Polyakov lines derived previously from lattice Yang-Mills theory and QCD by means of a resummed strong coupling expansion. The effective theory is useful for investigations of the phase structure, with a sign problem mild enough to allow simulations also at finite density. In this work we present a numerical method to determine improved values for the effective couplings directly from correlators of the 4d Yang-Mills theory. For values of the gauge coupling up to the vicinity of the phase transition, the dominant short range effective couplin…
We study the interpretation of Lattice data about the thermodynamics of the deconfinement phase of SU(3) Yang-Mills theory, in terms of gluon quasiparticles propagating in a background of a Polyakov loop. A potential for the Polyakov loop, inspired by the strong coupling expansion of the QCD action, is introduced; the Polyakov loop is coupled to tranverse gluon quasiparticles by means of a gas-like effective potential. This study is useful to identify the effective degrees of freedom propagating in the gluon medium above the critical temperature. A main general finding is that a dominant part …
We compute the effective action of the Polyakov loop in SU(2) and SU(3) Yang-Mills theory using a previously developed covariant variational approach. The formalism is extended to background gauge and it is shown how to relate the low order Green's functions to the ones in Landau gauge studied earlier. The renormalization procedure is discussed. The self-consistent effective action is derived and evaluated using the numerical solution of the gap equation. We find a clear signal for a deconfinement phase transition at finite temperatures, which is second order for SU(2) and first order for SU(3…
We study effective Polyakov loop models for SU(3) Yang-Mills theory at finite temperature. A comprehensive mean field analysis of the phase diagram is carried out and compared to the results obtained from Monte-Carlo simulations. We find a rich phase structure including ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic phases. Due to the presence of a tricritical point the mean field approximation agrees very well with the numerical data. Critical exponents associated with second-order transitions coincide with those of the Z_3 Potts model. Finally, we employ inverse Monte-Carlo methods to determine the eff…
We discuss a hydrodynamical description of the eigenvalues of the Polyakov line at large but finite $N_c$ for Yang-Mills theory in even and odd space-time dimensions. The hydro-static solutions for the eigenvalue densities are shown to interpolate between a uniform distribution in the confined phase and a localized distribution in the de-confined phase. The resulting critical temperatures are in overall agreement with those measured on the lattice over a broad range of $N_c$, and are consistent with the string model results at $N_c=\infty$. The stochastic relaxation of the eigenvalues of the P…
We integrate out fast varying quantum fluctuations around static A_4 and A_i fields for the SU(N) gauge group. By assuming that the gluon fields are slowly varying but allowing for an arbitrary amplitude of A_4 we obtain two variants of the effective high-temperature theory for the Polyakov line. One is the effective action for the gauge-invariant eigenvalues of the Polyakov line, and it is explicitly Z(N) symmetric. The other is the effective action for the Polyakov line itself as an element of the SU(N). In this case the theory necessarily includes the spatial components A_i to ensure its ga…
We have proposed the non-Abelian dual superconductivity in SU(3) Yang-Mills theory for the mechanism of quark confinement,and we presented the numerical evidences in preceding lattice conferences by using the proposed gauge link decomposition to extract magnetic monopole in the gauge invariant way. In this talk, we focus on the dual Meissner effects in view of the magnetic monopole in SU(3) Yang-Mills theory. We measure the chromoelectric and chromomagnetic flux due to a pair of quark and antiquark source at finite temperature. Then, we measure the correlation function of Polyakov loops and Po…
The dual superconductivity is a promising mechanism for quark confinement. We have presented a new formulation of the Yang-Mills theory on the lattice that enables us to change the original non-Abelian gauge field into the new field variables such that one of them called the restricted field gives the dominant contribution to quark confinement in the gauge independent way. We have pointed out that the SU(3) Yang-Mills theory has another reformulation using new field variables (minimal option), in addition to the way adopted by Cho, Faddeev and Niemi (maximal option). In the past lattice confer…
The high temperature expansion is an analytical tool to study critical phenomena in statistical mechanics. We apply this method to 3d effective theories of Polyakov loops, which have been derived from 4d lattice Yang-Mills by means of resummed strong coupling expansions. In particular, the Polyakov loop susceptibility is computed as a power series in the effective couplings. A Padé analysis then provides the location of the phase transition in the effective theory, which can be mapped back to the parameters of 4d Yang-Mills. Our purely analytical results for the critical couplings $β_c(N_τ)$ a…
Screenings of the quark-gluon plasma in electric and magnetic sectors are studied on the basis of generalized Polyakov-line correlation functions in lattice QCD simulations with two flavors of improved Wilson quarks. Using the Euclidean-time reflection ($\R$) and the charge conjugation ($\Ca$), electric and magnetic screening masses are extracted in a gauge invariant manner. Long distance behavior of the standard Polyakov-line correlation in the quark-gluon plasma is found to be dictated by the magnetic screening. Also, ratio of the two screening masses agrees with that obtained from the dimen…
I adapt a numerical method, previously applied to investigate the Yang-Mills vacuum wavefunctional, to the problem of extracting the effective Polyakov line action from SU(N) lattice gauge theories, with or without matter fields. The method can be used to find the variation of the effective Polyakov line action along any trajectory in field configuration space; this information is sufficient to determine the potential term in the action, and strongly constrains the possible form of the kinetic term. The technique is illustrated for both pure and gauge-Higgs SU(2) lattice gauge theory at finite…
The order parameter for the pure Yang-Mills phase transition is the Polyakov loop which encodes the symmetries of the Z_N center of the SU(N) gauge group. On the other side the physical degrees of freedom of any asymptotically free gauge theory are hadronic states. Using the Yang-Mills trace anomaly and the exact Z_N symmetry we construct a model able to communicate to the hadrons the information carried by the order parameter.
Properties of local Polyakov loops for SU(2) and SU(3) lattice gauge theory at finite temperature are analyzed. We show that spatial clusters can be identified where the local Polyakov loops have values close to the same center element. For a suitable definition of these clusters the deconfinement transition can be characterized by the onset of percolation in one of the center sectors. The analysis is repeated for different resolution scales of the lattice and we argue that the center clusters have a continuum limit.
We present a non-perturbative study of the running coupling constant in the Twisted Polyakov Loop (TPL) scheme. We investigate how the systematic and statistical errors can be controlled {\it via} a feasibility study in SU(3) pure Yang-Mills theory. We show that our method reproduces the perturbative determination of the running coupling in the UV. In addition, our numerical result agrees with the theoretical prediction of this coupling constant in the IR. We also present our preliminary results for $N_f=12$ QCD, where an IR fixed point may be present.
This paper concludes our efforts in describing SU(3)-Yang-Mills theories at different couplings/temperatures in terms of effective Polyakov-loop models. The associated effective couplings are determined through an inverse Monte Carlo procedure based on novel Schwinger-Dyson equations that employ the symmetries of the Haar measure. Due to the first-order nature of the phase transition we encounter a fine-tuning problem in reproducing the correct behavior of the Polyakov-loop from the effective models. The problem remains under control as long as the number of effective couplings is sufficiently…
We give an analytical derivation of the confinement/deconfinement phase transition at finite temperature in the $SU(N)$ Yang-Mills theory in the $D$-dimensional space time for $D>2$. For this purpose, we use a novel reformulation of the Yang-Mills theory which allows the gauge-invariant gluonic mass term, and calculate analytically the effective potential of the Polyakov loop average concretely for the $SU(2)$ and $SU(3)$ Yang-Mills theories by including the gauge-invariant dynamical gluonic mass $M$. For $D=4$, we give an estimate on the transition temperature $T_d$ as the ratio $T_d/M$ to th…
Screening properties of the quark gluon plasma are studied from Polyakov-loop correlation in lattice QCD simulations with two flavors of improved Wilson quarks at temperatures $T/\Tpc \simeq 1$--4 where $\Tpc$ is the pseudocritical temperature. Using the Euclidean-time reflection symmetry and the charge conjugation symmetry, we introduce various types of Polyakov-loop correlation functions and extract screening masses in magnetic and electric sectors. We find that the temperature dependence of the screening masses are well described by the weak coupling expansion. We also find that a ratio of …
We use gauge/string duality to analytically evaluate the renormalized Polyakov loop in pure Yang-Mills theories. For SU(3), the result is in a quite good agreement with lattice simulations for a broad temperature range.
We study the renormalization of Polyakov loops in different irreducible representations of SU(N) Yang-Mills theories at finite temperature, and investigate their behavior in the large-N limit.
We present a progress report on studying S-duality in lattice N=4 super Yang-Mills. This is being done through a computation of 1/2-BPS states on the Coulomb branch, especially the 't Hooft--Polyakov monopole and the W boson. Key to these calculations is the use of twisted and C-periodic boundary conditions. In addition we describe a variational method to disentangle operators with definite scaling dimension, particularly the Konishi and supergravity operators.
We formulate a random matrix-like model for the Polyakov loop in SU(N) Yang-Mills theories. It describes a simplified dynamics in terms of eigenvalue differences. The deconfinement phase transition encoded in center symmetry breaking is reproduced including its nature being first order for SU(3) and second order for SU(2). Analytical arguments about the phases are presented and a comparison to other approaches is made.
The solution of symmetry equation of Yang-Mills self dual system is found in explicit form of its raising Hamiltonian operator. Thus explicit form of equations of self dual Yang Mills hierarchy is constructed.
The correlations between the modulus of the Polyakov loop, its phase $θ$ and the Landau gauge gluon propagator at finite temperature are investigated in connection with the center symmetry for pure Yang-Mills SU(3) theory. In the deconfined phase, where the center symmetry is spontaneously broken, the phase of the Polyakov loop per configuration is close to $θ= 0$, $\pm \, 2 π/3$. We find that the gluon propagator form factors associated with $θ\approx 0$ differs quantitatively and qualitatively from those associated to $θ\approx \pm \, 2 π/3$. This difference between the form factors is a pro…
The susceptibilities of the real and imaginary parts, as well as of the modulus of the Polyakov loop, are computed in SU(3) lattice gauge theory. We show that the ratios of these susceptibilities are excellent probes of the deconfinement transition, independent of the renormalization of the Polyakov loop and only weakly dependent on the system size. The ratios are almost temperature independent above and below the transition and exhibit a discontinuity at the transition temperature. This characteristic behavior can be understood in terms of the global Z(3) symmetry of the Yang-Mills Lagrangian…
A study of the center symmetric phase of SU(2) Yang Mills theory is presented. Realization of the center symmetry is shown to result from non-perturbative gauge fixing. Dictated by the center symmetry, this phase exhibits already at the perturbative level confinement like properties. The analysis is performed by investigating the dynamics of the Polyakov loops. The ultralocality of these degrees of freedom implies significant changes in the vacuum structure of the theory. General properties of the confined phase and of the transition to the deconfined phase are discussed. Perturbation theory b…
The dual superconductivity is a promising mechanism for quark confinement. We have proposed the non-Abelian dual superconductivity picture for SU(3) Yang-Mills theory, and showed the restricted field dominance (called conventionally Abelian dominance), and non-Abelian magnetic monopole dominance in the string tension. We have further demonstrated by measuring the chromoelectric flux that the non-Abelian dual Meissner effect exists and determined that the dual superconductivity for SU(3) case is of type I, which is in sharp contrast to the SU(2) case: the border of type I and type II. In this t…
We compare different Polyakov loop actions yielding effective descriptions of finite-temperature SU(2) Yang-Mills theory on the lattice. The actions are motivated by a simultaneous strong-coupling and character expansion obeying center symmetry and include both Ising and Ginzburg-Landau type models. To keep things simple we limit ourselves to nearest-neighbor interactions. Some truncations involving the most relevant characters are studied within a novel mean-field approximation. Using inverse Monte-Carlo techniques based on exact geometrical Schwinger-Dyson equations we determine the effectiv…
It is demonstrated that there are smooth Yang-Mills potentials which correspond to monopoles and vortices of one-half winding number. They are the generic configurations, in contrast to the integral winding number configurations like the 't Hooft-Polyakov monopole.
We study effective Polyakov loop models for SU(N) Yang-Mills theories at finite temperature. In particular effective models for SU(3) YM with an additional adjoint Polyakov loop potential are considered. The rich phase structure including a center and anti-center directed phase is reproduced with an effective model utilizing the inverse Monte-Carlo method. The demon method as a possibility to obtain the effective models' couplings is compared to the method of Schwinger-Dyson equations. Thermalization effects of microcanonical and canonical demon method are analyzed. Finally the elaborate canon…
We investigate the relation between the realization of center symmetry and the dependence on the topological parameter $θ$ in $SU(N)$ Yang-Mills theories, exploiting trace deformations as a tool to regulate center symmetry breaking in a theory with a small compactified direction. We consider, in particular, $SU(4)$ gauge theory, which admits two possible independent deformations, and study, as a first step, its phase diagram in the deformation plane for two values of the inverse compactified radius going up to $L^{-1} \sim 500$ MeV, comparing the predictions of the effective 1-loop potential o…
We calculate the energy of a Yang-Mills vortex as function of its magnetic flux or, else, of the Wilson loop surrounding the vortex center. The calculation is performed in the 1-loop approximation. A parallel with a potential as function of the Polyakov line at nonzero temperatures is drawn. We find that quantized Z(2) vortices are dynamically preferred though vortices with arbitrary fluxes cannot be ruled out.
We derive effective actions for SU(2) Polyakov loops using inverse Monte Carlo techniques. In a first approach, we determine the effective couplings by requiring that the effective ensemble reproduces the single-site distribution of the Polyakov loops. The latter is flat below the critical temperature implying that the (untraced) Polyakov loop is distributed uniformly over its target space, the SU(2) group manifold. This allows for an analytic determination of the Binder cumulant and the distribution of the mean-field, which turns out to be approximately Gaussian. In a second approach, we empl…
We study the four-dimensional Yang-Mills theory in the presence of a three-dimensional membrane of fermions by lattice Monte Carlo simulations. We analyze the phase structure of this theory at finite temperature. Below the phase transition temperature of the pure Yang-Mills theory, we obtain an unconventional phase with spatially-nonuniform vacuum. In this phase, the expectation value of the Polyakov loop is finite on the membrane, and it exponentially decays to zero outside the membrane.
We study the thermodynamics of large N pure 2+1 dimensional Yang-Mills theory on a small spatial sphere. By studying the effective action for the Polyakov loop order parameter, we show analytically that the theory has a second order deconfinement transition to a phase where the eigenvalue distribution of the Polyakov loop is non-uniform but still spread over the whole unit circle. At a higher temperature, the eigenvalue distribution develops a gap, via an additional third-order phase transition. We discuss possible forms of the full phase diagram as a function of temperature and sphere radius.…
We study effective lattice actions describing the Polyakov loop dynamics originating from finite-temperature Yang-Mills theory. Starting with a strong-coupling expansion the effective action is obtained as a series of Z(3)-invariant operators involving higher and higher powers of the Polyakov loop, each with its own coupling. Truncating to a subclass with two couplings we perform a detailed analysis of the statistical mechanics involved. To this end we employ a modified mean field approximation and Monte Carlo simulations based on a novel cluster algorithm. We find excellent agreement of both …
We show that in four-dimensional gauge theories dual to five-dimensional Einstein gravity coupled to a single scalar field in the bulk the derivative of the single heavy quark free energy in the deconfined phase is $dF_{Q}(T)/dT \sim -1/c_s^2(T)$, where $c_s(T)$ is the speed of sound. This general result provides a direct link between the softest point in the equation of state of strongly-coupled plasmas and the deconfinement phase transition described by the expectation value of the Polyakov loop. We give an explicit example of a gravity dual with black hole solutions that can reproduce the l…
We study Casimir scaling and renormalization properties of Polyakov loops in different irreducible representations in SU(N) gauge theories; in particular, we investigate the approach to the large-N limit, by performing lattice simulations of Yang-Mills theories with an increasing number of colors, from 2 to 6. We consider the twelve lowest irreducible representations for each gauge group, and find strong numerical evidence for nearly perfect Casimir scaling of the bare Polyakov loops in the deconfined phase. Then we discuss the temperature dependence of renormalized loops, which is found to be…
We present lattice simulations of a center symmetric dimensionally reduced effective field theory for SU(2) Yang Mills which employ thermal Wilson lines and three-dimensional magnetic fields as fundamental degrees of freedom. The action is composed of a gauge invariant kinetic term, spatial gauge fields and a potential for the Wilson line which includes a "fuzzy" bag term to generate non-perturbative fluctuations. The effective potential for the Polyakov loop is extracted from the simulations including all modes of the loop as well as for cooled configuration where the hard modes have been ave…
