On the linear increase of the flux tube thickness near the deconfinement transition

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that near the deconfinement transition, the flux tube thickness in lattice gauge theories increases linearly with interquark distance, contrasting with the logarithmic growth at zero temperature, supported by simulations.

Contribution

The paper provides a detailed derivation of the linear increase of flux tube thickness near deconfinement and validates it with high-precision simulations in the 3d gauge Ising model.

Findings

Flux tube thickness increases linearly near deconfinement.

Effective string model predicts different growth behaviors at different temperatures.

Simulation results agree with the theoretical prediction.

Abstract

We study the flux tube thickness of a generic Lattice Gauge Theory near the deconfining phase transition. It is well known that the effective string model predicts a logarithmic increase of the flux tube thickness as a function of the interquark distance for any confining LGT at zero temperature. It is perhaps less known that this same model predicts a linear increase in the vicinity of the deconfinement transition. We present a precise derivation of this result and compare it with a set of high precision simulations in the case of the 3d gauge Ising model.