Deconfinement from Action Restriction

The effect of restricting the plaquette to be greater than a certain cutoff value is studied. The action considered is the standard Wilson action with the addition of a plaquette restriction, which should not affect the continuum limit of the theory. In this investigation, the strong coupling limit is also taken. It is found that a deconfining phase transition occurs as the cutoff is increased, on all lattices studied (up to $20^4$). The critical cutoff on the infinite lattice appears to be around 0.55. For cutoffs above this, a fixed point behavior is observed in the normalized fourth cumulant of the Polyakov loop, suggesting the existence of a line of critical points corresponding to a massless gluon phase, not unlike the situation in compact U(1). The Polyakov loop susceptibility also appears to be diverging with lattice size at these cutoffs. A strong finite volume behavior is observed in the pseudo-specific heat. It is discussed whether these results could still be consistent with the standard crossover picture which precludes the existence of a deconfining phase transition on an infinite symmetric lattice.