Polyakov loops and monopoles in QCD

TL;DR

This paper investigates the role of abelian Polyakov loops and monopoles in lattice QCD, showing their significance as order parameters for deconfinement and analyzing their contributions across different gauges.

Contribution

It demonstrates that abelian Polyakov loops serve as order parameters and decomposes their contributions into monopoles and photons, applicable across various abelian projections.

Findings

Polyakov loops in abelian projection act as deconfinement order parameters.

Dirac strings cause the vanishing of Polyakov loops in the confinement phase.

Photons contribute finite values in both confined and deconfined phases.

Abstract

Monte-Carlo simulations of abelian projection of $T \neq 0$ pure lattice QCD show that 1) Polyakov loops written in terms of abelian link fields alone play a role of an order parameter of deconfinement transition, 2) the abelian Polyakov loops are decomposed into contributions from Dirac strings of monopoles and from photons, 3) vanishing of the abelian Polyakov loops in the confinement phase is due to the Dirac strings alone and the photons give a finite contribution in both phases. Moreover, these results appear to hold good with any abelian projection as seen from the studies in the maximally abelian gauge and in various unitary gauges.