Exotic phases of finite temperature SU(N) gauge theories with massive fermions: F, Adj, A/S

Understand

The phase diagrams at high temperature of SU(N) gauge theories with massive fermions are calculated by numerically minimizing the one-loop effective potential.

• We consider fermions in the Fundamental (F), Adjoint (Adj), Antisymmetric (AS), and Symmetric (S) representations, for N from 3 to 9, with periodic and antiperiodic boundary conditions applied.
• For one flavour of AS/S (Dirac) fermion with periodic boundary conditions the C-breaking phase is favoured perturbatively for all values of the fermion mass.
• In the case of one flavour of adjoint Majorana fermion, and periodic boundary conditons, the deconfined phase is favoured for any fermion mass.