Continuum Study of Deconfinement at Finite Temperature

Abstract

Deconfinement and chiral symmetry restoration are explored in a confining, renormalizable, Dyson-Schwinger equation model of two-flavor QCD. An order parameter for deconfinement is introduced and used to establish that, in the chiral limit, deconfinement and chiral symmetry restoration are coincident at ${T}_{c}\ensuremath{\approx}150\mathrm{MeV}$. The transitions are second order and each has the same critical exponent: $\ensuremath{\beta}\ensuremath{\approx}0.3$. The deconfinement transition exhibits sensitivity to the current-quark mass. ${f}_{\ensuremath{\pi}}$ and ${m}_{\ensuremath{\pi}}$ change by less than 10% for $T<{0.7T}_{c}$; however, as $T\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{T}_{c}$, thermal fluctuations cause the pion bound state contribution to the four-point quark-antiquark correlation function to disappear.