Confinement order parameters and fluctuations

Abstract

We study order parameters for the confinement-deconfinement phase transition related to the Polyakov-loop variable. The functional renormalisation group is used to compute these order parameters in a unified, non-perturbative continuum approach. Our result for the expectation value of the traced Polyakov loop agrees quantitatively with the lattice result. Furthermore, we discuss how this order parameter differs from the standard continuum Polyakov loop. For temperatures close to the phase transition temperature there are significant deviations. We argue that these deviations are of crucial importance for QCD effective models, which usually implicitly rely on a Gaussian approximation neglecting this difference.