Chiral symmetry restoration and deconfinement in QCD at finite temperature

TL;DR

This paper investigates the relationship between chiral symmetry restoration and deconfinement in QCD at finite temperature using finite energy sum rules, finding that deconfinement occurs slightly before chiral symmetry restoration.

Contribution

It establishes a quantitative relation between chiral symmetry restoration and deconfinement and analyzes the temperature dependence of the $a_1(1260)$ meson parameters.

Findings

Deconfinement occurs at a slightly lower temperature than chiral symmetry restoration.

The $a_1(1260)$ width increases and coupling decreases with temperature.

Results support quark-gluon deconfinement at high temperatures.

Abstract

The light-quark correlator in the axial-vector channel is used, in conjunction with finite energy QCD sum rules at finite temperature, in order to (a) establish a relation between chiral-symmetry restoration and deconfinement, and (b) determine the temperature behavior of the $a_1(1260)$ width and coupling. Results indicate that deconfinement takes place at a slightly lower temperature than chiral-symmetry restoration, although this difference is not significant given the accuracy of the method. The behaviour of the $a_1(1260)$ parameters is consistent with quark-gluon deconfinement, as the width grows and the coupling decreases with increasing temperature.