Anderson Metal-to-Critical Transition in QCD

TL;DR

This paper proposes a new understanding of the thermal phase transition in QCD, suggesting it is a transition to a critical state with scale invariance, rather than an insulator, based on Dirac mode analysis.

Contribution

It introduces a novel critical state at the transition in QCD characterized by a singular mobility edge at zero, supported by Dirac spectral analysis in pure-glue QCD.

Findings

Infrared Dirac modes extend to arbitrarily long distances in the IR phase.

The IR phase supports scale invariance and critical behavior.

A new singular mobility edge at zero emerges at the transition.

Abstract

A picture of thermal QCD phase change based on the analogy with metal-to-insulator transition of Anderson type was proposed in the past. In this picture, a low-$T$ thermal state is akin to a metal with deeply infrared (IR) Dirac modes abundant and extended, while a high-$T$ state is akin to an insulator with IR modes depleted and localized below a mobility edge $\lambda_{\text A} > 0$. Here we argue that, while $\lambda_{\text A}$ exists in QCD, a high-$T$ state is not an insulator in such an analogy. Rather, it is a critical state arising due to a new singular mobility edge at $\lambda_{\text IR}=0$. This new mobility edge appears upon the transition into the recently proposed IR phase. As a key part of such a metal-to-critical scenario, we present evidence using pure-glue QCD that deeply infrared Dirac modes in the IR phase extend to arbitrarily long distances. This is consistent with our previous suggestion that the IR phase supports scale invariance in the infrared. We discuss the role of Anderson-like aspects in this thermal regime and emphasize that the combination of gauge field topology and disorder plays a key role in shaping its IR physics. Our conclusions are conveyed by the structure of Dirac spectral non-analyticities.