2005/02/28 by Ofer Aharony, Joseph Marsano, Shiraz Minwalla +2 · 6 citations
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Combinatorics #Compactification (mathematics) #Conjecture #Deconfinement #Gauge theory #Mathematical physics #Mathematics #Order (exchange) #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Partition function (quantum field theory) #Phase transition #Physics #Pure mathematics #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions #Quantum mechanics #hep-lat #hep-ph #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.71.125018
published as Phys.Rev.D71:125018,2005 · 63 pages (40 pages + 2 appendices), 6 figures, harvmac. v2: minor corrections
openalex publication_date 2005/06/28 · arxiv created 2006/08/14 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We give an analytic demonstration that the 3+1-dimensional large N SU(N) pure Yang-Mills theory, compactified on a small S3 so that the coupling constant at the compactification scale is very small, has a first order deconfinement transition as a function of temperature. We do this by explicitly computing the relevant terms in the canonical partition function up to three-loop order; this is necessary because the leading (one-loop) result for the phase transition is precisely on the border line between a first order and a second order transition. Since numerical work strongly suggests that the infinite-volume large N theory also has a first order deconfinement transition, we conjecture that the phase structure is independent of the size of the S3. To deal with divergences in our calculations, we are led to introduce a novel method of regularization useful for non-Abelian gauge theory on S3.