1998/10/31 by Yi-hong Gao, Miao Li
Physics and Astronomy · #hep-th
published as Nucl.Phys. B551 (1999) 229-241 · 15 pages, harvmac. Minor errors corrected, argument in sect. 3 improved
arxiv created 1999/01/19 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30
We argue that the large N strong/weak phase transition is a generic phenomenon in a finite temperature supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory of maximal supersymmetry. \cal N=4, D=4 SYM is the canonical example, where we also argue that the large N Hawking-Page phase transition disappears for a sufficiently small coupling. The Hawking-Page transition temperature is lowered by the first \ap correction. Physically, the strong/weak phase transition is identified with the correspondence point of Horowitz and Polchinski. We also try to construct toy models to demonstrate the large N phase transitions, with limited success.