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 Physics at Virginia

"Continuity of the Deconfinement Transition in (Super) Yang Mills Theory"


Thomas Schaefer , North Carolina State University
[Host: Diana Vaman]
ABSTRACT:
Finding controlled, analytical approaches to the deconfinement transition in QCD is an old problem. Here we present a weak coupling calculation of the deconfinement transition in a deformed version of QCD. We argue that this transition is continuously connected to the transition in pure gauge theory, which takes place in strong coupling.

More technical abstract: We study the phase diagram of SU(2) Yang-Mills theory with one adjoint Weyl fermion on R^3xS^1 as a function of the fermion mass m and the compactification scale beta. This theory reduces to thermal pure gauge theory as m->infinity and to circle-compactified (twisted) susy gluodynamics in the limit m->0. In the m-L plane, there is a line of center symmetry changing phase transitions. In the limit m->infinity, this transition takes place at beta_c=1/T_c, where T_c is the critical temperature of the deconfinement transition in pure Yang-Mills theory. We show that near m=0, the critical scale beta_c can be computed using semi-classical methods and that the transition is of second order. This suggests that the deconfining phase transition in pure Yang-Mills theory is continuously connected to a phase transition that can be studied in weak coupling. The center symmetry changing phase transition arises from the competition of fractionally charged instanton-monopoles and instanton molecules. The calculation can be extended to higher rank gauge groups and non-zero theta angle.

SLIDESHOW:
High Energy Physics Seminar
Thursday, November 15, 2012
2:30 PM
Physics Building, Room 313
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