On the chiral and deconfinement phase transitions in parity-conserving QED_3 at finite temperature

TL;DR

This paper investigates the relationship between chiral symmetry breaking and deconfinement transitions in parity-conserving QED3 at finite temperature, proposing a connection between the dynamically generated fermion mass and confinement properties.

Contribution

It introduces a framework to analyze how the dynamical fermion mass influences confinement and deconfinement transitions in QED3 at finite temperature, extending previous models to the massless case.

Findings

Low-temperature confining phase linked to fermion mass generation

Deconfinement occurs when the dynamical mass Sigma vanishes above T_{ch}

Gauge field dynamics impact fermion mass generation

Abstract

We present some results about the interplay between the chiral and deconfinement phase transitions in parity-conserving QED3 (with N flavours of massless 4 component fermions) at finite temperature. Following Grignani et al (Phys. Rev. D53, 7157 (1996), Nucl. Phys. B473, 143 (1996)), confinement is discussed in terms of an effective Sine-Gordon theory for the timelike component of the gauge field A_0. But whereas in the references above the fermion mass m is a Lagrangian parameter, we consider the m=0 case and ask whether an effective S-G theory can again be derived with m replaced by the dynamically generated mass Sigma which appears below T_{ch}, the critical temperature for the chiral phase transition. The fermion and gauge sectors are strongly interdependent, but as a first approximation we decouple them by taking Sigma to be a constant, depending only on the constant part of the gauge field. We argue that the existence of a low-temperature confining phase may be associated with the generation of Sigma; and that, analogously, the vanishing of Sigma for T > T_{ch} drives the system to its deconfining phase. The effect of the gauge field dynamics on mass generation is also indicated. (38kb)