Theta dependence of the deconfinement temperature in Yang-Mills theories

TL;DR

The θ dependence of the deconfinement temperature of SU(3) pure gauge theory is determined, finding that it decreases in the presence of a topological θ term.

Abstract

We determine the theta dependence of the deconfinement temperature of SU(3) pure gauge theory, finding that it decreases in presence of a topological theta term. We do that by performing lattice simulations at imaginary theta, then exploiting analytic continuation. We also give an estimate of such dependence in the limit of a large number of colors N, and compare it with our numerical results.

Figures (4)

• Figure 1: Polyakov loop and its susceptibility as a function of $\beta$ on a $24^3 \times 6$ lattice and for a few $\theta_L$ values. The susceptibility values have been multiplied by a factor 250.
• Figure 2: Determinations of the renormalization constant $Z$ on a $16^4$ lattice. The dashed line is a cubic interpolation of data.
• Figure 3: $T_c(\theta)/T_c(0)$ as a function of $\theta^2$ for different values of $N_t$. Dashed lines are the result of linear fits, as reported in the text, then extrapolated to $\theta^2 > 0$.
• Figure 4: $R_\theta$ as a function of $1/N_t^2$. The point at $1/N_t = 0$ is the continuum limit extrapolation, assuming $O(a^2)$ corrections.