Dynamical Restoration of Z_N Symmetry in SU(N)+Higgs Theories

Abstract

We study the Z_N symmetry in SU(N)+Higgs theories with the Higgs field in the fundamental representation. The distributions of the Polyakov loop show that the Z_N symmetry is explicitly broken in the Higgs phase. On the other hand, inside the Higgs symmetric phase the Polyakov loop distributions and other physical observables exhibit the Z_N symmetry. This effective restoration of the Z_N symmetry changes the nature of the confinement-deconfinenement transition. We argue that the Z_N symmetry will lead to time independent topological defect solutions in the Higgs symmetric deconfined phase which will play important role at high temperatures.

13 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Effective potentials, thermodynamics, and twisted mass quarks
• Exotic phases of finite temperature SU(N) gauge theories

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Brout-Englert-Higgs physics: From foundations to phenomenology
• Confinement-Deconfinement transition in $SU(2)+$Higgs Theory
• Confinement-Deconfinement transition and $Z_2$ symmetry in $Z_2+$Higgs theory
• $Z_N$ symmetry in $SU(N)$ gauge theories
• Confinement-deconfinement transition in $SU(3)$-Higgs theory