Collective field approach to gauged principal chiral field at large N

The lattice model of principal chiral field interacting with the gauge fields, which have no kinetic term, is considered. This model can be regarded as a strong coupling limit of lattice gauge theory at finite temperature. The complete set of equations for collective field variables is derived in the large N limit and the phase structure of the model is studied.Comment: LaTex (no figures), preprint SMI-94-7, 10 p

String Breaking from Ladder Diagrams in SYM Theory

The AdS/CFT correspondence establishes a string representation for Wilson loops in N=4 SYM theory at large N and large 't Hooft coupling. One of the clearest manifestations of the stringy behaviour in Wilson loop correlators is the string-breaking phase transition. It is shown that resummation of planar diagrams without internal vertices predicts the strong-coupling phase transtion in exactly the same setting in which it arises from the string representation.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures; v2: misprint in eq. (3.9) corrected; v4: treatment of inhomogeneous term in the Dyson equation modifie

Level Crossing in Random Matrices: I. Random perturbation of a fixed matrix

We consider level crossing in a matrix family $H=H_0+\lambda V$ where $H_0$ is a fixed $N\times N$ matrix and $V$ belongs to one of the standard Gaussian random matrix ensembles. We study the probability distribution of level crossing points in the complex plane of $\lambda$, for which we obtain a number of exact, asymptotic and approximate formulas.Comment: 35 pages, 16 figures; v2: Introduction and sec. 3.3 expanded, refs. adde