Landau gauge gluon and ghost propagators at finite temperature from quenched lattice QCD

TL;DR

This study investigates the behavior of gluon and ghost propagators in pure SU(3) gauge theory at finite temperature using quenched lattice QCD, focusing on the momentum range near the deconfinement transition.

Contribution

It provides continuum-limit results for gluon propagators at finite temperature and identifies signals of the phase transition through specific propagator combinations.

Findings

Finite-size and Gribov-copy effects are small near T_c.

The longitudinal gluon propagator D_L(q) is highly sensitive to the phase transition.

Certain combinations of D_L(q) can serve as indicators of the deconfinement transition.

Abstract

The behavior of the Landau gauge gluon and ghost propagators is studied in pure SU(3) gauge theory at non-zero temperature on the lattice. We concentrate on the momentum range [0.6, 2.0] GeV. For the longitudinal as well as for the transverse component of the gluon propagator we extract the continuum limit. We demonstrate the smallness of finite-size and Gribov-copy effects at temperatures close to the deconfinement phase transition at T=T_c and within the restricted range of momenta. Since the longitudinal component D_L(q) turns out to be most sensitive with respect to the phase transition we propose some combinations of D_L(q) signalling the transition much like "order parameters".