More about QCD on compact spaces

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the spontaneous breaking of global symmetries in four-flavor, three-color QCD is affected by the geometry of compact spaces, revealing different phase transition behaviors depending on boundary conditions and dimensions.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the phase structure of QCD on compact spaces, especially regarding symmetry breaking and transition separation under various boundary conditions.

Findings

Single transition when short directions are equal and identical boundary conditions.

Separated C-breaking and deconfinement transitions with opposite boundary conditions.

Transitions are qualitatively affected by the relative lengths of the compact dimensions.

Abstract

We present some results about spontaneous breaking of global symmetries for four-flavor, three color QCD on compact spaces with two short directions. When the two short directions have equal length and identical boundary conditions, there is a single transition. When the two short directions have boundary conditions of opposite parity and are of roughly equal extent, the C-breaking and deconfinement transitions separate. When the two short dimensions are of different length, the transitions are modified in qualitative agreement with expectations from dimensional reduction. These features resemble the situation in pure gauge simulations at small and large number of colors.