Interfaces in hot gauge theory

The string tension at low T and the free energy of domain walls at high T can be computed from one and the same observable. We show by explicit calculation that domain walls in hot Z(2) gauge theory have good thermodynamical behaviour. This is due to roughening of the wall, which expresses the restoration of translational symmetry.Comment: Contributed paper to the proceedings of the second workshop on Continuous Advances in QCD, ITP, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, March 28-31, 1996. 11 pages, figures and style file are appended in uuencoded gzip.tar.fil

Debye mass from domainwalls and dimensionally reduced phase diagram

To measure the Debye mass in dimensionally reduced QCD for $N_c\le 3$ we replace in the correlator of two Polyakov loops one of the loops by a wall triggered by a dimensionally reduced twist. The phase diagram for $N_c=3$ has R-parity broken in part of the Higgs phase.Comment: LATTICE98(hightemp

CP violation and chiral symmetry restoration in the hot linear sigma model in a strong magnetic background

We study the effects of CP violation on the nature of the chiral transition within the linear sigma model with two flavors of quarks. The finite-temperature effective potential containing contributions from nontrivial values for the parameter $\theta$ is computed to one loop order and their minima structure is analyzed. Motivated by the possibility of observing the formation of CP-odd domains in high-energy heavy ion collisions, we also investigate the behavior of the effective potential in the presence of a strong magnetic background. We find that the nature of the chiral transition is influenced by both $\theta$ and the magnetic field.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figure

Wilson line in high temperature particle physics

The physics of the Wilson line leads to new developments in high temperature particle physics. The main tool is the effective action for a given fixed value of the phase of the Wilson line. It furnishes a gauge invariant infrared cut off, and yields for small values of the phases a systematic procedure for obtaining a power series in the coupling g and glog(1/g). It breaks the centergroup symmetry of the gauge group only at high temperature so leads to domain walls disappearing at low temperatures. It shows long lived metastable states in the standard model, SU(5), SO(10) and its SUSY partners, with possibilities for CP violation and thermal inflation.