2003/10/31 by Ofer Aharony, Joseph Marsano, Shiraz Minwalla +2
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions #hep-lat #hep-ph #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.crhy.2004.09.012
published as Adv.Theor.Math.Phys.8:603-696,2004 · harvmac, 90 pages, 14 figures, 67 footnotes. V3: added references and minor clarifications. v4: added reference, minor changes. v5: corrected figure captions. v6: small corrections and added footnote
openalex publication_date 2004/11/01 · arxiv created 2005/02/09 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2017/04/07 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
We demonstrate that weakly coupled, large N , d -dimensional <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">SU</mml:mi> <mml:mo stretchy="false">(</mml:mo> <mml:mi>N</mml:mi> <mml:mo stretchy="false">)</mml:mo> </mml:math> gauge theories on a class of compact spatial manifolds (including <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:msup> <mml:mi>S</mml:mi> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>d</mml:mi> <mml:mo>−</mml:mo> <mml:mn>1</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msup> <mml:mo>×</mml:mo> <mml:mtext>time</mml:mtext> </mml:math> ) undergo deconfinement phase transitions at temperatures proportional to the inverse length scale of the manifold in question. The low temperature phase has a free energy of order one, and is characterized by a stringy (Hagedorn) growth in its density of states. The high temperature phase has a free energy of order <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:msup> <mml:mi>N</mml:mi> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> </mml:msup> </mml:math> . These phases are separated either by a single first order transition that generically occurs below the Hagedorn temperature or by two continuous phase transitions, the first of which occurs at the Hagedorn temperature. These phase transitions appear to be continuously connected to the usual flat space deconfinement transition in the case of confining gauge theories, and to the Hawking–Page nucleation of <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:msub> <mml:mi mathvariant="italic">AdS</mml:mi> <mml:mn>5</mml:mn> </mml:msub> </mml:math> black holes in the case of the <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mi mathvariant="double-struck">N</mml:mi> <mml:mo>=</mml:mo> <mml:mn>4</mml:mn> </mml:math> supersymmetric Yang–Mills theory. Our analysis proceeds by first reducing the Yang–Mills partition function to a <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mo stretchy="false">(</mml:mo> <mml:mn>0</mml:mn> <mml:mo>+</mml:mo> <mml:mn>0</mml:mn> <mml:mo stretchy="false">)</mml:mo> </mml:math> -dimensional integral over a unitary matrix U , which is the holonomy (Wilson loop) of the gauge field around the thermal time circle in Euclidean space; deconfinement transitions are large N transitions in this matrix integral.