Theta dependence of the deconfining phase transition in pure SU(N_c) Yang-Mills theories

Abstract

Recently, it has been conjectured that deconfining phase transition in SU(N_c) pure Yang-Mills theories is continuously connected to a quantum phase transition in softly broken N=1 super Yang-Mills on R^{1,2}*S^1. We exploit this conjecture to study the strength of the transition and deconfining temperature as a function of the vacuum angle theta in pure Yang-Mills. We find that the transition temperature is a decreasing function of theta in [0, \pi), in an excellent agreement with recent lattice simulations. We also predict that the transition becomes stronger for the same range of theta, and comment on the theta dependence in the large N_c limit. More lattice studies are required to test our predictions.