Can we decide whether QCD is confining or not at high temperature?

Abstract

At high temperature measurements of the Polyakov loop suggest a deconfinement transition to the (strongly interacting) quark-gluon plasma. At the same time at the infinitely large temperature the four-dimensional QCD is reduced to the three-dimensional QCD that is confining. The Polyakov loop and related Z_3 symmetry are strict order parameters only for infinitely heavy quarks. In such a situation the SU(2)_CS and SU(4) symmetries of confinement in the light quark sector could be helpful to distinguish between the confining and deconfining phase in a regime where SU(2)_L \times SU(2)_R and U(1)_A symmetries are manifest. In order to reveal a presence or absence of these symmetries one needs to measure and compare correlation functions related by these symmetry transformations.