Physics – High Energy Physics – High Energy Physics - Lattice
Scientific paper
2005-12-21
Nucl.Phys.B748:524-539,2006
Physics
High Energy Physics
High Energy Physics - Lattice
20 pages, 13 figures, uses elsart.sty; replaced to match published version
Scientific paper
10.1016/j.nuclphysb.2006.05.017
We suggest that the gauge-invariant hedgehoglike structures in the Wilson loops are physically interesting degrees of freedom in the Yang--Mills theory. The trajectories of these ``hedgehog loops'' are closed curves corresponding to center-valued (untraced) Wilson loops and are characterized by the center charge and winding number. We show numerically in the SU(2) Yang--Mills theory that the density of hedgehog structures in the thermal Wilson--Polyakov line is very sensitive to the finite-temperature phase transition. The (additively normalized) hedgehog line density behaves like an order parameter: the density is almost independent of the temperature in the confinement phase and changes substantially as the system enters the deconfinement phase. In particular, our results suggest that the (static) hedgehog lines may be relevant degrees of freedom around the deconfinement transition and thus affect evolution of the quark-gluon plasma in high-energy heavy-ion collisions.
Belavin V. A.
Chernodub Maxim N.
Kozlov I. E.
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