High Temperature Limit of the Confining Phase

TL;DR

This paper explores the high temperature behavior of the confining phase in non-Abelian gauge theories, revealing a connection to string theory with diverging world-sheet fields at short distances.

Contribution

It analytically extends the confining phase to high temperatures at large N, linking it to a string theory with an infinite number of world-sheet fields.

Findings

High temperature confining phase can be analytically continued at large N.

Partition function resembles a string theory with diverging world-sheet fields.

Confinement persists at arbitrarily high temperatures in this regime.

Abstract

The deconfining transition in non-Abelian gauge theory is known to occur by a condensation of Wilson lines. By expanding around an appropriate Wilson line background, it is possible at large $N$ to analytically continue the confining phase to arbitrarily high temperatures, reaching a weak coupling confinement regime. This is used to study the high temperature partition function of an $SU(N)$ electric flux tube. It is found that the partition function corresponds to that of a string theory with a number of world-sheet fields that diverges at short distance.