Ideal topological gas in the high temperature phase of SU(3) gauge theory

Abstract

We show that the nature of the topological fluctuations in $SU(3)$ gauge theory changes drastically at the finite temperature phase transition. Starting from temperatures right above the phase transition topological fluctuations come in well separated lumps of unit charge that form a non-interacting ideal gas. Our analysis is based on a novel method to count not only the net topological charge, but also separately the number of positively and negatively charged lumps in lattice configurations using the spectrum of the overlap Dirac operator. This enables us to determine the joint distribution of the number of positively and negatively charged topological objects, and we find this distribution to be consistent with that of an ideal gas of unit charged topological objects.

arXiv comment7 pages, 6 eps figures (expanded journal version, new figure, discussion and references added)

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Cited by in corpus (11)

• Eigenvalue spectra of QCD and the fate of $U_A(1)$ breaking towards the chiral limit
• Unusual Features of QCD Low-Energy Modes in IR Phase
• Topological susceptibility of pure gauge theory using Density of States
• Localization of Dirac Fermions in Finite-Temperature Gauge Theory
• Anderson Metal-to-Critical Transition in QCD
• Localization of Dirac modes in finite-temperature ${\mathbb{Z}}_2$ gauge theory on the lattice
• Three-dimensional Abelian and non-Abelian gauge Higgs theories
• Deconfinement transition and localization of Dirac modes in finite-temperature ${\mathbb{Z}}_3$ gauge theory on the lattice
• Localisation of Dirac modes in gauge theories and Goldstone's theorem at finite temperature
• Topological features of the deconfinement transition
• Thermal behavior of effective U_A(1) anomaly couplings in reflection of higher topological sectors