We study the behavior across the deconfinement phase transition of the chromoelectric flux tube generated by a static quark and a static antiquark for several distances between them. We present preliminary results for distances up to 1.33 fm and temperatures up to $1.5 T_c$.
The hypothesis that the QCD vacuum can be modeled as a dual superconductor is a powerful tool to describe the distribution of the color field generated by a quark-antiquark static pair and, as such, can provide useful clues for the understanding of c
onfinement. In this work we investigate, by lattice Monte Carlo simulations of the $SU(3)$ pure gauge theory and of (2+1)-flavor QCD with physical mass settings, some properties of the chromoelectric flux tube at zero temperature and their dependence on the physical distance between the static sources. We draw some conclusions about the validity domain of the dual superconductor picture.
Analyzing correlation functions of charmonia at finite temperature ($T$) on $32^3times(32-96)$ anisotropic lattices by the maximum entropy method (MEM), we find that $J/psi$ and $eta_c$ survive as distinct resonances in the plasma even up to $T simeq
1.6 T_c$ and that they eventually dissociate between $1.6 T_c$ and $1.9 T_c$ ($T_c$ is the critical temperature of deconfinement). This suggests that the deconfined plasma is non-perturbative enough to hold heavy-quark bound states. The importance of having sufficient number of temporal data points in the MEM analysis is also emphasized.
In the framework of a holographic QCD approach we study an influence of matters on the deconfinement temperature, $T_c$. We first consider quark flavor number ($N_f$) dependence of $T_c$. We observe that $T_c$ decreases with $N_f$, which is consisten
t with a lattice QCD result. We also delve into how the quark number density $rho_q$ affects the value of $T_c$. We find that $T_c$ drops with increasing $rho_q$. In both cases, we confirm that the contributions from quarks are suppressed by $1/N_c$, as it should be, compared to the ones from a gravitational action (pure Yang-Mills).
The phase structure of hot gauge theories with dynamical matter fields is reexamined in the canonical ensemble with respect to triality. We discuss properties of chromoelectric and chromomagnetic sectors of the theory and show whereas electric charge
s carrying a unit of Z(N) charge are screened at high temperatures via dynamical matter loops, this is not the case for the Z(N) magnetic flux. An order parameter is constructed to probe the realization of local Z(N) symmetry in the magnetic sector. We argue this order parameter may be used to detect the deconfinement phase transition which is defined in terms of the screening mechanism.
We present possible indications for flavor separation during the QCD crossover transition based on continuum extrapolated lattice QCD calculations of higher order susceptibilities. We base our findings on flavor specific quantities in the light and s
trange quark sector. We propose a possible experimental verification of our prediction, based on the measurement of higher order moments of identified particle multiplicities. Since all our calculations are performed at zero baryochemical potential, these results are of particular relevance for the heavy ion program at the LHC.