A Holographic Prediction of the Deconfinement Temperature

TL;DR

This work demonstrates that deconfinement in AdS/QCD frameworks can be understood as a first-order Hawking-Page transition between thermal AdS and an AdS black hole, with the transition temperature determined by infrared cutoffs in hard-wall and soft-wall constructions. By matching vector-meson spectra to experimental data, the authors fix the IR scales and predict Tc values: about $122\,\mathrm{MeV}$ in the hard-wall model and about $191\,\mathrm{MeV}$ in the soft-wall model, the latter aligning with lattice results. The analysis emphasizes consistency with large-$N_c$ field theory expectations, arguing that horizon formation occurs at a finite $T_c>0$ and that a horizon at $T=0$ would contradict confinement physics. Overall, the paper connects holographic infrared structure to a QCD-like deconfinement temperature and highlights the soft-wall model’s improved phenomenology for Tc.

Abstract

We argue that deconfinement in AdS/QCD models occurs via a first order Hawking-Page type phase transition between a low temperature thermal AdS space and a high temperature black hole. Such a result is consistent with the expected temperature independence, to leading order in 1/N_c, of the meson spectrum and spatial Wilson loops below the deconfinement temperature. As a byproduct, we obtain model dependent deconfinement temperatures T_c in the hard and soft wall models of AdS/QCD. Our result for T_c in the soft wall model is close to a recent lattice prediction.

Figures (1)

• Figure 1: The solid line is the free energy difference in the hard wall model, the dashed line the difference in the soft wall model. The graph was made in units where $L^3/\kappa^2=c=z_0=1$.