2007/12/10 by Adi Armoni, Mikhail Shifman, Mithat Ünsal +1 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Center (category theory) #Deconfinement #Mathematical physics #Orientifold #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Phase transition #Physics #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions #Quantum mechanics #Supersymmetry #Theoretical physics #hep-lat #hep-ph #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.77.045012
published as Phys.Rev.D77:045012,2008 · 28 pages, 1 figure. v2: typos corrected, refs. added
arxiv created 2007/12/10 · openalex publication_date 2008/02/07 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We consider orientifold field theories [i.e., SU(N) Yang-Mills theories with fermions in the two-index symmetric or antisymmetric representations] on R3\ifmmode×\else\texttimes\fiS1 where the compact dimension can be either temporal or spatial. These theories are planar equivalent to supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory. The latter has ZN center symmetry. The famous Polyakov criterion establishing confinement-deconfinement phase transition as that from ZN symmetric to ZN broken phase applies. At the Lagrangian level the orientifold theories have at most a Z2 center. We discuss how the full ZN center symmetry dynamically emerges in the orientifold theories in the limit N\ensuremath→\ensuremath∞. In the confining phase the manifestation of this enhancement is the existence of stable k strings in the large-N limit of the orientifold theories. These strings are identical to those of supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories. We argue that critical temperatures (and other features) of the confinement-deconfinement phase transition are the same in the orientifold daughters and their supersymmetric parent up to 1/N corrections. We also discuss the Abelian and non-Abelian confining regimes of four-dimensional QCD-like theories.