Critical behavior of the compact 3d U(1) gauge theory on isotropic lattices

We report on the computation of the critical point of the deconfinement phase transition, critical indices and the string tension in the compact three dimensional U(1) lattice gauge theory at finite temperatures. The critical indices govern the behavior across the deconfinement phase transition in the pure gauge U(1) model and are generally expected to coincide with the critical indices of the two-dimensional XY model. We studied numerically the U(1) model for N_t=8 on lattices with spatial extension ranging from L=32 to L=256. Our determination of the infinite volume critical point on the lattice with N_t=8 differs substantially from the pseudo-critical coupling at L=32, found earlier in the literature and implicitly assumed as the onset value of the deconfined phase. The critical index $\nu$ computed from the scaling of the pseudo-critical couplings with the extension of the spatial lattice agrees well with the XY value $\nu$=1/2. On the other hand, the index $\eta$ shows large deviation from the expected universal value. The possible reasons of such behavior are discussed in details.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures; version accepted for publication on J. Stat. Mech

Deconfinement in QCD with dynamical quarks

We study the phase structure of full QCD within the canonical ensemble with respect to triality in a lattice formulation. The procedure for the calculation of the effective potentials in this case is given. As an example we consider the three dimensional SU(2) gauge model at finite temperatures in the strong coupling region. The potential exhibits a deconfinement phase transition unlike the similar potential obtained in the grand canonical ensemble which demonstrates explicit Z(N) symmetry breaking at any temperature. Furthermore, we investigate the effective potential with the chiral condensate included. In contradiction to other authors, we find chiral symmetry restoration in all triality sectors. In the scheme with massless staggered fermions we observe chiral symmetry restoration accompanying a deconfinement phase transition of first order. Above the critical point, besides two Z(2) symmetric "deconfining" vacua there exists a metastable "confining" vacuum in a wide region of parameters. Such a picture could be interpreted as an indication on a mixed state of hadrons and quarks in the vicinity of the critical line.Comment: 17 pages with 6 eps. figures include

Fresh look on triality

Investigating the $Z_3$ symmetry in Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) we show that full QCD with a vacuum of vanishing baryonic number does not lead to metastable phases. Rather in QCD with dynamical fermions, the degeneracy of $Z_3$ phases manifests itself in observables without open triality.Comment: 9 pages, 0 figures, latex, IK-TUW-Preprint 930840

Mass Gap, Abelian Dominance and Vortex Dynamics in SU(2) Spin Model

We discuss a new approach to the investigation of the nature of the mass gap in spin systems with continuous global symmetries which is much analogous to the method of abelian projection in the gauge theories. We suggest that the abelian degrees of freedom, in particular, abelian vortices are responsible for the mass gap generation phenomena in the non-abelian spin systems. To check our hypothesis we study numerically the three-dimensional SU(2) spin model in the Maximal Abelian projection. We find that the abelian mass gap in the projected theory coincides with the full non-abelian mass gap within numerical errors. The study of the percolation properties of the abelian vortex trajectories shows that the phase transition and the mass gap generation in the 3D SU(2) spin model are driven by the abelian vortex condensation.Comment: 12 pages, LaTeX, 4 figures, uses epsf.sty; Fig.3 is replaced and a few comments are adde

Phase structure and confinement properties of noncompact gauge theories I

In the context of reviewing noncompact lattice gauge models at zero and finite temperature we study in detail a contribution of the invariant measure and the time-like plaquette configurations to correlation functions, analyze the problem of the compactness of the potentials in respect to the confinement and indicate the essential features to deal with the Wilson gauge theory in the weak coupling region. A method for calculating an effective confining noncompact model is also proposed.Comment: Latex file, 24 pages, no figure

Critical behavior of the compact 3d U(1) theory in the limit of zero spatial coupling

Critical properties of the compact three-dimensional U(1) lattice gauge theory are explored at finite temperatures on an asymmetric lattice. For vanishing value of the spatial gauge coupling one obtains an effective two-dimensional spin model which describes the interaction between Polyakov loops. We study numerically the effective spin model for N_t=1,4,8 on lattices with spatial extension ranging from L=64 to L=256. Our results indicate that the finite-temperature U(1) lattice gauge theory belongs to the universality class of the two-dimensional XY model, thus supporting the Svetitsky-Yaffe conjecture.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figures; two references added, a few comments included, title changed; version to appear on J. Stat. Mec