Topological defects and equation of state of gluon plasma

Abstract

We show that the degrees of freedom associated with magnetic monopole- and vortexlike gluonic configurations make a strong contribution to the anomaly of the energy-momentum tensor of Yang-Mills theory in the deconfinement phase immediately above the critical temperature. As is well known in zero-temperature Yang-Mills theory, the monopoles and vortices are constituents of a generic gluonic object in which the two neighbor monopoles are connected together by a segment of vortex string. Our results provide evidence that the monopole-vortex chains in SU(2) gauge theory and their SU(3) counterparts, the monopole-vortex nets, are thermodynamically relevant degrees of freedom in the gluonic plasma.