Z₃ twisted chiral condensates in QCD at finite temperatures

It was recently observed in a lattice QCD measurement that the chiral condensate in the quenched approximation shows dramatically different behavior in the three Z3-equivalent deconfined phases. We argue that this phenomenon can be understood qualitatively as an effect of Z3 twists on fermionic fields. Quarks under these Z3 twists become global anyons and, hence, display different thermodynamic properties. We further show that the lattice data can be roughly modeled by a Nambu-Jona-Lasinio-type Lagrangian with a minimal coupling to a constant gauge field A0=2πnT/3 (with n=0,±1), which arises naturally from the nontrivial phase of the Polyakov line.

Duke Scholars

Author Shailesh Chandrasekharan Physics