The deconfining phase transition of SO(N) gauge theories in 2+1 dimensions

Understand

We calculate the deconfining temperature of SO(N) gauge theories in 2+1 dimensions, and determine the order of the phase transition as a function of N, for various values of N in the range [4,16].

• We do so by extrapolating our lattice results to the infinite volume limit, and then to the continuum limit, for each value of N.
• We then extrapolate to the N=infinity limit and observe that the SO(N) and SU(N) deconfining temperatures agree in that limit.
• We find that the the deconfining temperatures of all the SO(N) gauge theories appear to follow a single smooth function of N, despite the lack of a non-trivial centre for odd N.