Exotic phases of finite temperature SU(N) gauge theories

TL;DR

This paper explores the phase structure of finite temperature SU(N) gauge theories with massive fermions, revealing diverse phases and symmetry-breaking phenomena through one-loop effective potential calculations.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of phase diagrams for SU(N) gauge theories with various fermion representations and boundary conditions, including new insights into symmetry breaking.

Findings

Multiple phases observed for Nf >= 2 Majorana flavors with periodic boundary conditions.

Confined phase is accessible via perturbative methods.

Fundamental fermions induce Z(3) symmetry breaking in SU(3) gauge theories.

Abstract

We calculate the phase diagrams at high temperature of SU(N) gauge theories with massive fermions by minimizing the one-loop effective potential. Considering fermions in the adjoint (Adj) representation at various N we observe a variety of phases when Nf >= 2 Majorana flavours and periodic boundary conditions are applied to fermions. Also the confined phase is perturbatively accessible. For N = 3, we add Fundamental (F) representation fermions with antiperiodic boundary conditions to adjoint QCD to show how the Z(3)-symmetry breaks in the confined phase.