The thermodynamics of large-N QCD and the nature of metastable phases

Understand

In the limit of a large number of colors (N), both Yang-Mills and quantum chromodynamics are expected to have a first-order phase transition separating a confined hadronic phase and a deconfined plasma phase.

• One aspect of this separation is that at large N, one can unambiguously identify a plasma regime that is strongly coupled.
• The existence of a first-order transition suggests that the hadronic phase can be superheated and the plasma phase supercooled.
• The supercooled deconfined plasma present at large N, if it exists, has the remarkable property that it has negative absolute pressure -- i.e.