AdS black holes and thermal Yang-Mills correlators

TL;DR

This paper compares real-time correlators of scalar glueball operators in finite-temperature Yang-Mills theory at weak and strong coupling, revealing a qualitative difference in their analytic structures that may indicate a phase transition.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the analytic structure of correlators differs between perturbative and AdS black hole approaches, suggesting a possible phase transition in large N thermal N=4 SYM.

Findings

Weak coupling correlators have branch cuts.

Strong coupling correlators have poles.

Potential phase transition indicated by structural differences.

Abstract

We study the real time correlators of scalar glueball operators for Yang-Mills theory at finite temperature in flat space. The analytic structure of the frequency space propagator in perturbative field theory is seen to be qualitatively different to the strong coupling results that may be obtained from perturbations about AdS black hole spacetimes: we find branch cuts rather than poles. This difference appears to persist away from the strict zero and infinite coupling limits, possibly suggesting a phase transition in large N thermal N = 4 SYM theory as a function of the 't Hooft coupling.