Dyons and Roberge - Weiss transition in lattice QCD

Abstract

We study lattice QCD with $N_f=2$ Wilson fermions at nonzero imaginary chemical potential and nonzero temperature. We relate the Roberge - Weiss phase transition to the properties of dyons which are constituents of the KvBLL calorons. We present numerical evidence that the characteristic features of the spectral gap of the overlap Dirac operator as function of an angle modifying the boundary condition are determined by the $Z_3$ sector of the respective imaginary chemical potential. We then demonstrate that dyon excitations in thermal configurations could be responsible (in line with perturbative excitations) for these phenomena.