Cooling study of Dirac sheets in SU(3) lattice gauge theory below T_c

TL;DR

This study investigates the stability of Dirac sheets in SU(3) lattice gauge theory below the critical temperature, revealing their dependence on Polyakov loop values and phase transition proximity through numerical and analytical analysis.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the stability conditions of Dirac sheets in SU(3) gauge theory, linking lattice observations with analytical predictions near the phase transition.

Findings

Dirac sheets are stable near the deconfinement transition with nontrivial Polyakov loops.

Numerical results agree with analytical predictions about Dirac sheet stability.

Stable Dirac sheets are associated with specific U(1) subgroups in SU(3).

Abstract

Using a standard cooling method for SU(3) lattice gauge fields constant Abelian magnetic field configurations are extracted after dyon-antidyon constituents forming metastable Q=0 configurations have annihilated. These so-called Dirac sheets, standard and non-standard ones, corresponding to the two U(1) subgroups of the SU(3) group, have been found to be stable if emerging from the confined phase, close to the deconfinement phase transition, with sufficiently nontrivial Polyakov loop values. On a finite lattice we find a nice agreement of the numerical observations with the analytic predictions concerning the stability of Dirac sheets depending on the value of the Polyakov loop.