Related papers: Polyakov Loop Dynamics in the Center Symmetric Pha…
By fixing lattice Yang-Mills configurations to the maximal center gauge and subsequently applying the technique of center projection, one can identify center vortices in these configurations. Recently, center vortices have been shown to…
In order to investigate the direct relation between confinement and chiral symmetry breaking in QCD, we investigate the Polyakov loop in terms of the Dirac eigenmodes in both confined and deconfined phases. Using the Dirac-mode expansion…
We have previously found analytically a very unusual and unexpected form of confinement in SU(3) Yang-Mills theory. This confinement occurs in the deconfined phase of the theory. The free energy of a single static test quark diverges, even…
We put forward a Polyakov-loop extended quark meson model, where matter as well as glue fluctuations are taken into account, cf. [1]. The latter are included via a Polyakov-loop potential. Usually such a glue potential is based on…
We represent the Polyakov loop correlator as a spectral sum of correlators of eigenvectors of the lattice Dirac operator. This spectral representation is studied numerically using quenched SU(3) configurations below and above the…
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…
This is a pedagogical introduction to the physics of confinement on $R^3 \times S^1$, using $SU(2)$ Yang-Mills with massive or massless adjoint fermions as the prime example; at the end, we also add fundamental flavours. The small-$S^1$…
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,…
Abelian theories in three dimensions can have linearly confining phases as a result of monopole-instantons, as shown, for SU(2) Yang-Mills theory broken to its abelian subgroup, by Polyakov. In this article the generalization of this phase…
Recently, it was argued that the thermal deconfinement transition in pure Yang-Mills theory is continuously connected to a quantum phase transition in softly-broken N=1 SYM theory on R^3 x S^1. The transition is semiclassically calculable…
Polyakov loop eigenvalues and their N-dependence are studied in 2 and 4 dimensional SU(N) YM theory. The connected correlation function of the single eigenvalue distributions of two separated Polyakov loops in 2D YM is calculated and is…
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…
We compute the two-loop corrections to the thermodynamical pressure of an SU(2) Yang-Mills theory being in its electric phase. Our results prove that the one-loop evolution of the effective gauge coupling constant is reliable for any…
We present a semiclassical approach to the SU(N) Yang--Mills theory whose partition function at nonzero temperatures is approximated by a saddle point -- an ensemble of an infinite number of interacting dyons of N kinds. The ensemble is…
We provide a detailed analysis of the gravitational wave spectrum of $SU(N)$ pure Yang-Mills theory. The confinement phase transition is described with an effective Polyakov loop model, using the latest lattice data as an input. In…
At high temperature measurements of the Polyakov loop suggest a deconfinement transition to the (strongly interacting) quark-gluon plasma. At the same time at the infinitely large temperature the four-dimensional QCD is reduced to the…
We describe how the inclusion of the gluonic Polyakov loop incorporates large gauge invariance and drastically modifies finite temperature calculations in chiral quark models after color neutral states are singled out. This generates an…
Using the Dirac-mode expansion method, which keeps the gauge invariance, we analyze the Polyakov loop in terms of the Dirac modes in SU(3) quenched lattice QCD in both confined and deconfined phases. First, to investigate the direct…
A PNJL model is built, in which the Polyakov-loop potential is explicitly Z$_{N_c}$-symmetric in order to mimic a Yang-Mills theory with gauge group SU($N_c$). The physically expected large-$N_c$ and large-$T$ behaviours of the…
A phenomenological expression for the thermodynamic potential of gluons and quarks is constructed which incorporates the features of deconfinement and chiral symmetry restoration known from lattice simulations. The thermodynamic potential…