Connecting dilaton thermal fluctuation with the Polyakov loop at finite temperature

2025/06/16 by Bing-Kai Sheng, Sheng, Bing-Kai, Yongliang Ma +1
Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Atomic and Subatomic Physics Research #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Lattice (hep-lat) #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #Nuclear Theory (nucl-th)

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2506.13549

openalex publication_date 2025/06/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/13 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

Understanding the character of the deconfinement phase transition is one of the fundamental challenges in particle physics. In this work, we derive a formula for the expectation value of the Polyakov loop -- the order parameter of the deconfinement phase transition -- in pure \mathrmSU(N_c) gauge systems at finite temperatures starting from the Coleman\textendash Weinberg-type effective potential encoding the trace anomaly of QCD. Our results are in good agreement with the Lattice QCD data and can effectively describe the large-N_c behaviors of the expectation value of the Polyakov loop. Notably, our findings predict the strongest first-order deconfinement phase transition as N_c → +∞. Furthermore, to establish a relation between the dilaton field and the Polyakov loop, we also derive the scale transformation rule for temperature based on quantum statistical mechanics. The results of this work may shed a light on the connection between deconfinement phase transition and evolution of scale symmetry in the thermal system.

Citations

• Peak of sound velocity, scale symmetry, and nuclear force in baryonic matter
• Quark saturation in the QCD phase diagram
• QCD phase diagram in a constant magnetic background. Inverse magnetic catalysis: where models meet the lattice
• Testing the dark SU(N) Yang-Mills theory confined landscape: From the lattice to gravitational waves
• Evidence for quark-matter cores in massive neutron stars
• Equation of state in (2+1)-flavor QCD with gradient flow
• Topology, magnetic field, and strongly interacting matter

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