We investigate the thermal phase structure of the Berenstein--Maldacena--Nastase (BMN) matrix model using non-perturbative lattice Monte Carlo calculations. Our main analyses span three orders of magnitude in the coupling, involving systems with sizes up to Nτ=24 lattice sites and SU(N) gauge groups with 8≤N≤16. In addition, we carry out extended checks of discretization artifacts for Nτ≤128 and gauge group SU(4). We find results for the deconfinement temperature that interpolate between the perturbative prediction at weak coupling and the large-N dual supergravity calculation at strong coupling. While we confirm that the phase transition is first order for strong coupling, it appears to be continuous for weaker couplings.
@article{arxiv.2412.13407,
title = {Finite-temperature phase diagram of the BMN matrix model on the lattice},
author = {Raghav G. Jha and Anosh Joseph and David Schaich},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2412.13407},
year = {2025}
}