Local Polyakov-loop fluctuation and center domains in quark-gluon plasma with many colors

Abstract

The deconfinement transition in non-Abelian gauge theory is understood as spontaneous breaking of $\mathbb{Z}_N$ symmetry at high temperatures. Accordingly, quark-gluon plasma generally includes some partial cells called center domains, each with a homogeneous Polyakov-loop expectation value. In this work, constructing an effective action describing the deconfinement vacuum of Yang-Mills theory with $N$ colors, we discuss the properties of center domains. First, we evaluate the spatial correlation of local Polyakov-loop fluctuation and demonstrate that some fluctuation becomes a Nambu-Goldstone-like mode in the large-$N$ limit. We also discuss surface tension between two $\mathbb{Z}_N$ center domains. Second, we estimate the global vacuum-to-vacuum transition in a single center domain. We find that some threshold volume exists, where a domain larger than this volume is stable, and vice versa. Identifying the threshold as the lower bound of a stable center domain volume, we quantitatively argue the typical volume scale of center domains.