Calorons and monopoles from smeared SU(2) lattice fields at non-zero temperature

TL;DR

This study investigates the topological structures in SU(2) lattice gauge fields at finite temperature, revealing how calorons and dyons evolve with temperature and their potential role in confinement.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of calorons and dyons in lattice fields at non-zero temperature, linking their abundance to phase transition dynamics.

Findings

Calorons dissociate into dyons as temperature increases.

Light dyons dominate above the deconfining transition.

Topological charge clusters correlate with caloron and dyon configurations.

Abstract

In equilibrium, at finite temperature below and above the deconfining phase transition, we have generated lattice SU(2) gauge fields and have exposed them to smearing in order to investigate the emerging clusters of topological charge. Analysing in addition the monopole clusters according to the maximally Abelian gauge, we have been able to characterize part of the topological clusters to correspond either to non-static calorons or static dyons in the context of Kraan-van Baal caloron solutions with non-trivial holonomy. We show that the relative abundance of these calorons and dyons is changing with temperature and offer an interpretation as dissociation of calorons into dyons with increasing temperature. The profile of the Polyakov loop inside the topological clusters and the (model-dependent) accumulated topological cluster charges support this interpretation. Above the deconfining phase transition light dyons (according to Kraan-van Baal caloron solutions with almost trivial holonomy) become the most abundant topological objects. They are presumably responsible for the magnetic confinement in the deconfined phase.