Polyakov loop and QCD thermodynamics from the gluon and ghost propagators

TL;DR

This paper uses non-perturbative gluon and ghost propagators to calculate the Polyakov loop effective potential, revealing a first-order deconfinement transition in SU(3) Yang-Mills theory and analyzing thermodynamic behavior near the critical temperature.

Contribution

It introduces a non-perturbative approach to study QCD thermodynamics using lattice-measured propagators, connecting the Polyakov loop potential with lattice data and chiral models.

Findings

First-order phase transition at critical temperature in SU(3) Yang-Mills.

Qualitative agreement of thermodynamic quantities with lattice data.

Sensitivity of thermodynamic quantities to propagator temperature dependence.

Abstract

We investigate quark deconfinement by calculating the effective potential of the Polyakov loop using the non-perturbative propagators in the Landau gauge measured in the finite-temperature lattice simulation. With the leading term in the 2-particle-irreducible formalism the resultant effective potential exhibits a first-order phase transitions for the pure SU(3) Yang-Mills theory at the critical temperature consistent with the empirical value. We also estimate the thermodynamic quantities to confirm qualitative agreement with the lattice data near the critical temperature. We then apply our effective potential to the chiral model study and calculate the order parameters and the thermodynamic quantities. Unlike the case in the pure Yang-Mills theory the thermodynamic quantities are sensitive to the temperature dependence of the non-perturbative propagators, while the behavior of the order parameters is less sensitive, which implies the importance of the precise determination of the temperature-dependent propagators.