String tension scaling in high-temperature confined SU(N) gauge theories

Journal Article · Fri Jan 15 00:00:00 EST 2010 · Physical Review. D, Particles Fields

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PHYSREVD.81.025012· OSTI ID:21409114

Meisinger, Peter N; Ogilvie, Michael C ^[1]

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1. Department of Physics, Washington University, Saint Louis, Missouri 63130 (United States)

SU(N) gauge theories, extended with adjoint fermions having periodic boundary conditions, are confining at high temperature for sufficiently light fermion mass m. In the high-temperature confining region, the one-loop effective potential for Polyakov loops has a Z(N)-symmetric confining minimum. String tensions associated with Polyakov loops are calculable in perturbation theory, and display a novel scaling behavior in which higher representations have smaller string tensions than the fundamental representation. In the magnetic sector, the Polyakov loop plays a role similar to a Higgs field, leading to an apparent breaking of SU(N) to U(1){sup N-1}. This in turn yields a dual effective theory where magnetic monopoles give rise to string tensions for spatial Wilson loops. The spatial string tensions arise semiclassically from kink solutions of the dual system. We prove that the spatial string tensions {sigma}{sub k}{sup (s)} associated with each N-ality k are constrained by a rigorous upper bound. This bound is saturated for N=2 and 3, but is insufficient to determine the spatial string tension scaling law for N{>=}4. Lattice simulations indicate that the high-temperature confining region is smoothly connected to the confining region of low-temperature pure SU(N) gauge theory. However, our results show that the string tension scaling behavior of the low-temperature region does not hold for the electric sector in the high-temperature region, and may not hold in the magnetic sector. The predicted change in the behavior of the electric sector should be readily distinguishable in lattice simulations.

• OSTI ID: 21409114
• Journal Information: Physical Review. D, Particles Fields, Vol. 81, Issue 2; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.81.025012; (c) 2010 The American Physical Society; ISSN 0556-2821
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS
BOUNDARY CONDITIONS
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
FERMIONS
GAUGE INVARIANCE
HIGGS BOSONS
HIGGS MODEL
LATTICE FIELD THEORY
MAGNETIC MONOPOLES
MASS
MATHEMATICAL SOLUTIONS
PERIODICITY
PERTURBATION THEORY
POTENTIALS
SCALING
SCALING LAWS
STRING THEORY
SU GROUPS
SYMMETRY
U-1 GROUPS
WILSON LOOP
BOSONS
CONSTRUCTIVE FIELD THEORY
ELEMENTARY PARTICLES
FIELD THEORIES
INVARIANCE PRINCIPLES
LIE GROUPS
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
MONOPOLES
M-THEORY
PARTICLE MODELS
POSTULATED PARTICLES
QUANTUM FIELD THEORY
SIMULATION
SYMMETRY GROUPS
U GROUPS
VARIATIONS