We provide evidence for partial deconfinement -- the deconfinement of a SU($M$) subgroup of the SU($N$) gauge group -- by using lattice Monte Carlo simulations. We take matrix models as concrete examples. By appropriately fixing the gauge, we observe that the $M\times M$ submatrices deconfine. This gives direct evidence for partial deconfinement at strong coupling. We discuss the applications to QCD and holography.
We provide the evidence for the existence of partially deconfined phase in large-$N$ gauge theory. In this phase, the SU($M$) subgroup of SU($N$) gauge group deconfines, where $\frac{M}{N}$ changes continuously from zero (confined phase) to one (deconfined phase). The partially deconfined phase may exist in real QCD with $N=3$.
The confinement/deconfinement transition in gauge theory plays important roles in physics, including the description of thermal phase transitions in the dual gravitational theory. Partial deconfinement implies an intermediate phase in which color degrees of freedom split into the confined and deconfined sectors. The partially-deconfined phase is dual to the small black hole that lies between the large black hole and graviton gas. Better understandings of partial deconfinement may provide us with a clue how gravity emerges from the field theory degrees of freedom. In this article, we briefly re…
We study the behavior of center sectors in pure SU(4) lattice gauge theory at finite temperature. The center sectors are defined as spatial clusters of neighboring sites with values of their local Polyakov loops near the same center elements. We study the connectedness and percolation properties of the center clusters across the deconfinement transition. We show that for SU(4) gauge theory deconfinement cannot be described as a percolation transition of center clusters, a finding which is different from pure SU(2) or pure SU(3) Yang Mills theory, where the percolation description even allows f…
We study the influence of an external magnetic field on the deconfinement transition in two-flavour lattice QCD with physical quark charges. We use dynamical overlap fermions without any approximation such as fixed topology and perform simulations on a $16^3 \times 6$ lattice and at a pion mass around $500MeV$. The pion mass (as well as the lattice spacing) was determined in independent runs on $12^3 \times 24$ lattices. We consider two temperatures, one of which is close to the deconfinement transition and one which is above. Within our limited statistics the dependence of the Polyakov loop a…
We argue that the confined and deconfined phases in gauge theories are connected by a partially deconfined phase (i.e. SU(M) in SU(N), where M<N, is deconfined), which can be stable or unstable depending on the details of the theory. When this phase is unstable, it is the gauge theory counterpart of the small black hole phase in the dual string theory. Partial deconfinement is closely related to the Gross-Witten-Wadia transition, and is likely to be relevant to the QCD phase transition. The mechanism of partial deconfinement is related to a generic property of a class of systems. As an instruc…
We summarize and extend evidence that the deconfinement phase transition in Yang-Mills theories can be viewed as change of effective non-perturbative degrees of freedom and of symmetries of their interactions. In short, the strings in four dimensions (4d) at temperatures below the critical temperature Tc are replaced by particles, or field theories in 3d at T>Tc. The picture emerges within various approaches based, in particular, on dual models, lattice data and field theoretic models. We concentrate mostly on the lattice data, or on the language of quantum geometry.
Recent striking lattice results on strong interaction and bound states above T_c can be explained by the nonperturbative Q\bar Q potential, predicted more than a decade ago in the framework of the field correlator method. Explicit expressions and quantitative estimates are given for Polyakov loop correlators in comparison with lattice data. New theoretical predictions for glueballs and baryons above T_c are given.
In this paper we consider the influence of relativistic rotation on the confinement/deconfinement transition in gluodynamics within lattice simulation. We perform the simulation in the reference frame which rotates with the system under investigation, where rotation is reduced to external gravitational field. To study the confinement/deconfinement transition the Polyakov loop and its susceptibility are calculated for various lattice parameters and the values of angular velocities which are characteristic for heavy-ion collision experiments. Different types of boundary conditions (open, periodi…
In this paper we study the confinement/deconfinement transition in lattice $SU(2)$ QCD at finite quark density and zero temperature. The simulations are performed on an $32^4$ lattice with rooted staggered fermions at a lattice spacing $a = 0.044 \mathrm{~fm}$. This small lattice spacing allowed us to reach very large baryon density (up to quark chemical potential $μ_q > 2000 \mathrm{~MeV}$) avoiding strong lattice artifacts. In the region $μ_q\sim 1000 \mathrm{~MeV}$ we observe for the first time the confinement/deconfinement transition which manifests itself in rising of the Polyakov loop an…
We study analytically the phase diagram of the pure $SU(N)$ lattice gauge theory at finite temperature, and we attempt to estimate the critical deconfinement temperature. We apply large $N$ techniques to the Wilson and to the Heat Kernel action, and we study the resulting models both in the strong coupling and in the weak coupling limits. Using the Heat Kernel action, we establish an interesting connection between the Douglas-Kazakov phase transition of two-dimensional QCD and the deconfining transition in $d$ dimensions. The analytic results obtained for the critical temperature compare well …
We introduce a 3D compact U(1) lattice gauge theory having nonlocal interactions in the temporal direction, and study its phase structure. The model is relevant for the compact QED$_3$ and strongly correlated electron systems like the t-J model of cuprates. For a power-law decaying long-range interaction, which simulates the effect of gapless matter fields, a second-order phase transition takes place separating the confinement and deconfinement phases. For an exponentially decaying interaction simulating matter fields with gaps, the system exhibits no signals of a second-order transition.
We determine the theta dependence of the deconfinement temperature of SU(3) pure gauge theory, finding that it decreases in presence of a topological theta term. We do that by performing lattice simulations at imaginary theta, then exploiting analytic continuation. We also give an estimate of such dependence in the limit of a large number of colors N, and compare it with our numerical results.
We investigate the use of persistent homology, a tool from topological data analysis, as a means to detect and quantitatively describe center vortices in $\mathrm{SU}(2)$ lattice gauge theory in a gauge-invariant manner. We provide evidence for the sensitivity of our method to vortices by detecting a vortex explicitly inserted using twisted boundary conditions in the deconfined phase. This inspires the definition of a new phase indicator for the deconfinement phase transition. We also construct a phase indicator without reference to twisted boundary conditions using a simple $k$-nearest neighb…
We propose a novel approach to the confinement-deconfinement transition in Yang-Mills theories in the context of gauge-fixed calculations. The method is based on a background-field generalisation of the Landau gauge (to which it reduces at vanishing temperature) with a given, center-symmetric background. This is to be contrasted with most implementations of background field methods in gauge theories, where one uses a variable, self-consistent background. Our proposal is a bona fide gauge fixing that can easily be implemented on the lattice and in continuum approaches. The resulting gauge-fixed…
Spatial confinement-deconfinement transition in accelerated gluodynamics within lattice simulation
Bogoliubov Laboratory of Theoretical Physics, Joint Institute for Nuclear Research（波戈留博夫理论物理实验室，俄罗斯核联合研究所）；Pacific Quantum Center, Far Eastern Federal University（太平洋量子中心，远东联邦大学）；Institute of Automation and Control Processes, Far Eastern Branch, Russian Academy of Science（自动化与控制过程研究所，俄罗斯科学院远东分院）
We derive a holographic prediction of the deconfinement temperature $T_c$ at vanishing chemical potential within a simplest AdS/QCD model with dynamical dilaton. Our analysis leads to a linear relation between $T_c^4$ and the gluon condensate. After normalizing this relation to the lattice data for $SU(3)$ pure gauge theory, the standard phenomenological value of gluon condensate from QCD sum rules leads to the prediction $T_c=156$ MeV which is in a perfect agreement with the modern lattice results and freeze-out temperature measured by the ALICE Collaboration.
We discuss the entropy carried by a quark-antiquark pair, in particular across the deconfinement transition. We therefore rely on a self-consistent solution to Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton gravity, capable of mimicking essential features of QCD. In particular we introduce a novel model that still captures well the QCD confinement and deconfinement phases, while allowing the introduction of a temperature in a phase which resembles the confined phase, this thanks to it being dual to a small black hole. We pay due attention to some subtleties of such model. We confirm the lattice picture of a strong …
Effects of a uniform (electro-) magnetic background field are investigated in the two-flavor nonlocal Polyakov-loop extended Nambu--Jona-Lasinio (PNJL) model. Temperature-dependences of the chiral order-parameter and the Polyakov-loop are investigated under the magnetic field. In the nonlocal PNJL model with four-dimensional momentum dependent distribution function, pseudo-critical temperatures of the chiral and deconfinement transitions are coincident each other even if the magnetic field is strong. It means that we can check the reliability of the distribution function under the strong magne…
We demonstrate a novel feature of certain phase transitions in theories with large rank symmetry group that exhibit specific types of non-local interactions. A typical example of such a theory is a large-$N$ gauge theory where by `non-local interaction' we mean the all-to-all coupling of color degrees of freedom. Recently it has been pointed out that nontrivial features of the confinement/deconfinement transition are understood as consequences of the coexistence of the confined and deconfined phases on the group manifold describing the color degrees of freedom. While these novel features of th…
We investigate instantons in finite temperature QCD via Witten's holographic QCD. To study the deconfinement phase, we use the setup proposed in [1] (arXiv:1107.4048). We find that the sizes of the instantons are stabilized at certain values both in the confinement and deconfinement phases. This agrees with the numerical result in the lattice gauge theory. Besides we find that the gravity duals of the large and small instantons in the deconfinement phase have different topologies. We also argue that the fluctuation of the topological charges is large in confinement phase while it is exponentia…
In the weak coupling limit of ${\rm SU}(N)$ Yang-Mills theory and the ${\rm O}(N)$ vector model, explicit state counting allows us to demonstrate the existence of a partially deconfined phase: $M$ of $N$ colors deconfine, and $\frac{M}{N}$ gradually grows from zero (confinement) to one (complete deconfinement). We point out that the mechanism admits a simple interpretation in the form of spontaneous breaking of gauge symmetry. In terms of the dual gravity theory, such breaking occurs during the formation of a black hole. We speculate whether the breaking and restoration of gauge symmetry can s…
Exploiting the recent lattice results for the infrared gluon propagator with light dynamical quarks, we solve the gap equation for the quark propagator. We thus model the chiral symmetry breaking mechanism with increasing number of flavours and study confinement (intimately tied with the analytic properties of QCD Schwinger functions) order parameters. We obtain, with this approach, clear signals of chiral symmetry restoration and deconfinement when the number of light quark flavors exceeds a critical value of $N_f^c \approx 8 \pm 1$, in agreement with the state-of-the-art direct lattice analy…
In this contribution we review some recent results about the emergence of 2D integrable systems in 3D Lattice Gauge Theories near the deconfinement transition. We focus on some concrete examples involving the flux tube thickness, the ratio of k-string tensions and Polyakov loops correlators in various models.
Center for Theoretical Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院理论物理中心）；Argonne National Laboratory（阿贡国家实验室）；Pacific Quantum Center, Far Eastern Federal University（远东联邦大学太平洋量子中心）；Institut Denis Poisson CNRS/UMR 7013, Université de Tours（图尔大学丹尼斯·泊松研究所（法国国家科学研究中心/联合研究单位7013））
We study the machine learning techniques applied to the lattice gauge theory's critical behavior, particularly to the confinement/deconfinement phase transition in the SU(2) and SU(3) gauge theories. We find that the neural network, trained on lattice configurations of gauge fields at an unphysical value of the lattice parameters as an input, builds up a gauge-invariant function, and finds correlations with the target observable that is valid in the physical region of the parameter space. In particular, if the algorithm aimed to predict the Polyakov loop as the deconfining order parameter, it …
In this work we study the topological properties of the $G_2$ lattice gauge theory by means of Monte Carlo simulations. We focus on the behaviour of topological quantities across the deconfinement transition and investigate observables related to the $θ$ dependence of the free energy. As in $SU(N)$ gauge theories, an abrupt change happens at deconfinement and an instanton gas behaviour rapidly sets in for $T>T_c$.
The one-dimensional lattice Schwinger model has recently been realized by using bosons in optical lattices. This model contains both confinement and deconfinement phases, whose phase diagram is controlled by the mass of the matter field and the topological angle. Since varying the mass of matter field is straightforward experimentally, we propose how to tune the topological angle, allowing accessing the entire phase diagram. We propose that direct experimental evidence of confinement and deconfinement can be obtained by measuring whether a physical charge is localized around a fixed gauge char…
The $\mathbb{C}P^{N-1}$ sigma model at finite temperature is studied using lattice Monte Carlo simulations on $S_{s}^{1} \times S_τ^{1}$ with radii $L_{s}$ and $L_τ$, respectively, where the ratio of the circumferences is taken to be sufficiently large ($L_{s}/L_τ \gg 1$) to simulate the model on $\mathbb{R} \times S^1$. We show that the expectation value of the Polyakov loop undergoes a deconfinement crossover as $L_τ$ is decreased, where the peak of the associated susceptibility gets sharper for larger $N$. We find that the global PSU($N$)=SU($N$)$/{\mathbb Z}_{N}$ symmetry remains unbroken …
We study the confinement/deconfinement transition in the D0-brane matrix model (often called the BFSS matrix model) and its one-parameter deformation (the BMN matrix model) numerically by lattice Monte Carlo simulations. Our results confirm general expectations from the dual string/M-theory picture for strong coupling. In particular, we observe the confined phase in the BFSS matrix model, which is a nontrivial consequence of the M-theory picture. We suggest that these models provide us with an ideal framework to study the Schwarzschild black hole, M-theory, and furthermore, the parameter regio…
Spatially inhomogeneous confinement-deconfinement phase transition in accelerated gluodynamics
Bogoliubov Laboratory of Theoretical Physics, Joint Institute for Nuclear Research（布洛别戈夫理论物理实验室，俄罗斯核子联合研究所）；Pacific Quantum Center, Far Eastern Federal University（太平洋量子中心，远东联邦大学）；Institute of Automation and Control Processes, Far Eastern Branch, Russian Academy of Science（自动化与控制过程研究所，俄罗斯科学院远东分院）
Maximal 't Hooft loops are studied in SO(3) lattice gauge theory at finite temperature T. Tunneling barriers among twist sectors causing loss of ergodicity for local update algorithms are overcome through parallel tempering, enabling us to measure the vortex free energy F and to identify a deconfinement transition at some $β_A^{crit}$. The behavior of F below $β_A^{crit}$ shows however striking differences with what is expected from discretizations in the fundamental representation.
Matter-free lattice gauge theories (LGTs) provide an ideal setting to understand confinement to deconfinement transitions at finite temperatures, which is typically due to the spontaneous breakdown (at large temperatures) of the centre symmetry associated with the gauge group. Close to the transition, the relevant degrees of freedom (Polyakov loop) transform under these centre symmetries, and the effective theory only depends on the Polyakov loop and its fluctuations. As shown first by Svetitsky and Yaffe, and subsequently verified numerically, for the $U(1)$ LGT in $(2+1)$-d the transition is…
The frequency dependent conductivity $σ(ω)$ of the strongly coupled Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) is estimated using a bottom up holographic model that can adequately describe recent lattice data for QCD thermodynamics at zero chemical potential. Different choices for the coupling between the bulk gauge field and the other bulk fields that define the background (the metric and a scalar field) are used in order to fit the lattice data for the electric charge susceptibility $χ_2^Q/T^2$. The ratio $σ_{DC}/T$ is found to vary near the deconfinement transition in a way that is similar to recent lattice …
It is shown that the effective string recently introduced to describe the long distance dynamics of 3D gauge systems in the confining phase has an intriguing description in terms of models of 2D self-avoiding walks in the dense phase. The deconfinement point, where the effective string becomes N=2 supersymmetric, may then be interpreted as the tricritical Theta point where the polymer chain undergoes a collapse transition. As a consequence, a universal value of the deconfinement temperature is predicted.
The deconfinement phase transition of SU(2) Yang--Mills theory is investigated in the Hamiltonian approach in Coulomb gauge assuming a quasi-particle picture for the grand canonical gluon ensemble. The thermal equilibrium state is found by minimizing the free energy with respect to the quasi-gluon energy. Above the deconfinement phase transition the ghost form factor remains infrared divergent but its infrared exponent is approximately halved, while the gluon energy, being infrared divergent in the confined phase, becomes infrared finite in the deconfined phase. For the effective gluon mass we…
