English

Shear and bulk viscosity for a pure glue theory using an effective matrix model

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2025-08-07 v2 High Energy Physics - Lattice Nuclear Theory

Abstract

At nonzero temperatures, the deconfining phase transition can be analyzed using an effective matrix model to characterize the change in holonomy. The model includes gluons and two-dimensional ghost fields in the adjoint representation, or ``teens''. As ghosts, the teen fields are responsible for the decrease of the pressure as TTdT \rightarrow T_d, with TdT_d the transition temperature for deconfinement. Using the solution of this matrix model for a large number of colors, the parameters of the teen fields are adjusted so that the expectation value of the Polyakov loop is close to the values from the lattice. The shear, η\eta, and bulk, ζ\zeta, viscosities are computed in weak coupling but nonzero holonomy. In the pure glue theory, the value of the Polyakov loop is relatively large in the deconfined phase, 1/2\approx 1/2 at TdT_d. Consequently, if ss is the entropy density, while η/s\eta/s decreases as TTdT\rightarrow T_d, it is still well above the conformal bound. In contrast, ζ/s\zeta/s is largest at TdT_d, comparable to η/s\eta/s, then falls off rapidly with increasing temperature and is negligible by 2Td\sim 2 T_d.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2504.20138,
  title  = {Shear and bulk viscosity for a pure glue theory using an effective matrix model},
  author = {Manas Debnath and Ritesh Ghosh and Najmul Haque and Yoshimasa Hidaka and Robert D. Pisarski},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2504.20138},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

66 pages, 18 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-28T23:14:19.762Z