Color Dynamics in External Fields

TL;DR

This paper studies how external magnetic fields affect phase transitions and deconfinement temperatures in lattice gauge theories, revealing unique behaviors in non-Abelian cases that shed light on color confinement mechanisms.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the deconfinement temperature decreases with increasing external chromomagnetic field in non-Abelian gauge theories, unlike the Abelian case, highlighting a key difference in gauge dynamics.

Findings

Critical coupling in U(1) is unaffected by external fields.

Deconfinement temperature in SU(2) and SU(3) decreases with stronger fields.

External fields influence non-Abelian gauge theory phase transitions.

Abstract

We investigate the vacuum dynamics of U(1), SU(2), and SU(3) lattice gauge theories in presence of external (chromo)magnetic fields, both in (3+1) and (2+1) dimensions. We find that the critical coupling for the phase transition in compact U(1) gauge theory is independent of the strength of an external magnetic field. On the other hand we find that, both in (3+1) and (2+1) dimensions, the deconfinement temperature for SU(2) and SU(3) gauge systems in a constant abelian chromomagnetic field decreases when the strength of the applied field increases. We conclude that the dependence of the deconfinement temperature on the strength of an external constant chromomagnetic field is a peculiar feature of non abelian gauge theories and could be useful to get insight into color confinement.