Heavy quark free energy in QCD and in gauge theories with gravity duals

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Recent lattice results in pure glue SU(3) theory at high temperatures have shown that the expectation value of the renormalized Polyakov loop approaches its asymptotic limit at high temperatures from above. We show that this implies that the "heavy quark free energy" obtained from the renormalized loop computed on the lattice does not behave like a true thermodynamic free energy. While this should be expected to occur in asymptotically free gauge theories such as QCD, we use the gauge/string duality to show that in a large class of strongly coupled gauge theories with nontrivial UV fixed points the Polyakov loop reaches its asymptotic value from above only if the dimension of the relevant operator used to deform the conformal field theory is greater than or equal to 3.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number065016
JournalPhysical Review D - Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology
Volume82
Issue number6
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 21 2010
Externally publishedYes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Nuclear and High Energy Physics

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Heavy quark free energy in QCD and in gauge theories with gravity duals'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this