Electric Flux Tube in Magnetic Plasma

TL;DR

This paper investigates the stability of electric flux tubes in a monopole plasma related to the quark-gluon plasma, combining macroscopic and microscopic quantum approaches to determine conditions for flux tube dissolution.

Contribution

It introduces a combined macroscopic and microscopic framework to analyze electric flux tube stability in monopole plasmas, providing a criterion for flux tube dissolution based on quantum scattering calculations.

Findings

Flux tubes dissolve at a critical size-momentum product.

Lattice data suggests flux tube dissolution at approximately 1.3 times the critical temperature.

Estimated magnetic monopole density at dissolution temperature is about 4.4 to 6.6 fm^{-3}.

Abstract

In this paper we study a methodical problem related to the magnetic scenario recently suggested and initiated by the authors \cite{Liao_ES_mono} to understand the strongly coupled quark-gluon plasma (sQGP): the electric flux tube in monopole plasma. A macroscopic approach, interpolating between Bose condensed (dual superconductor) and classical gas medium is developed first. Then we work out a microscopic approach based on detailed quantum mechanical calculation of the monopole scattering on electric flux tube, evaluating induced currents for all partial waves. As expected, the flux tube looses its stability when particles can penetrate it: we make this condition precise by calculating the critical value for the product of the flux tube size times the particle momentum, above which the flux tube dissolves. Lattice static potentials indicate that flux tubes seem to dissolve at $T>T_{dissolution} \approx 1.3 T_c$. Using our criterion one gets an estimate of the magnetic density $n\approx 4.4 \sim 6.6 fm^{-3}$ at this temperature.