Finite Temperature Behavior of the 3D Polyakov Model with Massless Quarks

TL;DR

This paper investigates the finite temperature behavior of the 3D Polyakov model with massless quarks, revealing how quark flavors influence monopole interactions and confinement mechanisms.

Contribution

It demonstrates how the presence of massless quarks alters monopole interactions and the critical temperature for confinement in the 3D Polyakov model.

Findings

Quark zero modes reduce the BKT critical temperature for one flavor.

For multiple flavors, monopoles only exist in a molecular phase at very low temperatures.

No confinement via monopoles occurs at high temperatures with many quark flavors.

Abstract

The (2+1)D Georgi-Glashow (or Polyakov) model with the additional fundamental massless quarks is explored at finite temperature. In the case of vanishing Yukawa coupling, it is demonstrated that the interaction of a monopole and an antimonopole in the molecule via quark zero modes leads to the decrease of the Berezinsky-Kosterlitz-Thouless critical temperature when the number of quark flavors is equal to one. If the number of flavors becomes larger, monopoles are shown to exist only in the molecular phase at any temperatures exceeding a certain exponentially small one. This means that for such a number of flavors and at such temperatures, no fundamental matter can be confined by means of the monopole mechanism.