High Temperature Confinement in SU(N) Gauge Theories

Understand

SU(N) gauge theories, extended with adjoint fermions having periodic boundary conditions, are confining at high temperature for sufficiently light fermion mass m.

• Lattice simulations indicate that this confining region is smoothly connected to the confining region of low-temperature pure SU(N) gauge theory.
• In the high temperature confining region, the one-loop effective potential for Polyakov loops has a Z(N)-symmetric confining minimum.
• String tensions associated with Polyakov loops are smooth functions of m/T.