Non extremal geometries and holographic phase transitions

TL;DR

This paper investigates phase transitions in non-extremal geometries derived from type IIB superstring theory, revealing a first-order confinement-deconfinement transition in the dual gauge theory at a critical temperature.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the thermodynamics of non-extremal deformed conifold geometries and their role in modeling phase transitions in large N thermal QCD.

Findings

Identification of a first-order confinement-deconfinement phase transition at critical temperature T_c.

Calculation of T_c as a function of 'tHooft coupling.

Agreement of thermodynamic results with conformal limits and exploration of non-conformal gauge theories.

Abstract

Using the low energy limit of type IIB superstring theory, we obtain the non-extremal limit of deformed conifold geometry which is dual to the IR limit of large N thermal QCD.At low temperatures, the extremal geometry without black hole is favored while at high temperatures, the field theory is described by non-extremal black hole geometry. We compute the ten dimensional on shell action for extremal and non-extremal geometries and demonstrate that at a critical temperature $T_c$ there is a first order confinement to deconfinement phase transition. We compute $T_c$ as a function of 'tHooft coupling and study the thermodynamics of the dual gauge theory by evaluating the free energy and entropy of the ten dimensional geometry. We find agreement with the conformal limit while thermodynamics of non-conformal strongly coupled gauge theories is explored using the black hole geometries in non-AdS space.