English

Thermal N = 4 SYM theory as a 2D Coulomb gas

High Energy Physics - Theory 2008-11-26 v1

Abstract

We consider N = 4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory with SU(N) gauge group at large N and at finite temperature on a spatial S^3. We show that, at finite weak 't Hooft coupling, the theory is naturally described as a two dimensional Coulomb gas of complex eigenvalues of the Polyakov-Maldacena loop, valued on the cylinder. In the low temperature confined phase the eigenvalues condense onto a strip encircling the cylinder, while the high temperature deconfined phase is characterised by an ellipsoidal droplet of eigenvalues.

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Cite

@article{arxiv.hep-th/0610103,
  title  = {Thermal N = 4 SYM theory as a 2D Coulomb gas},
  author = {Sean A. Hartnoll and S. Prem Kumar},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-th/0610103},
  year   = {2008}
}

Comments

1+10 pages. 2 figures