Skip to main content
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Surface tension in hot QCD, effective potential, and hot zero modes

Conference · · AIP Conference Proceedings (American Institute of Physics); (United States)
OSTI ID:6698008
 [1]
  1. Centre Physique Theoretique au C.N.R.S., Route Leon Lachamps, B.P.907, Campus de Luminy, F 13288, Marsielle (France)
The Z(N) centergroup symmetry in hot QCD is spontaneously broken, as long as quarks are absent. Between domains of different degenerate Z(N) vacua there are domain walls, with a surface tension computable in perturbation theory. The key to the calculation is the effective action whose form we evaluate including two loops as function of the Polyakov loop. The main result is the stability of the Z(N) vacua, to two loop order. Adding dynamical quarks changes the effective action qualitatively and quantitatively. The degeneracy of the Z(N) vacua is lifted and replaced by metastable minima, up to a critical number of flavors. The thermodynamical interpretation of the latter is not clear. But the stable minimum stays put at the trivial value of the Polyakov loop. In going from one vacuum to another we find fermionic zero modes.
OSTI ID:
6698008
Report Number(s):
CONF-920837--
Conference Information:
Journal Name: AIP Conference Proceedings (American Institute of Physics); (United States) Journal Volume: 272:2
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English