Deconfinement and Chiral Symmetry Restoration

Abstract

We discuss the critical behaviour of strongly interacting matter close to the QCD phase transition. Emphasis is put on a presentation of results from lattice calculations that illustrate deconfining as well as chiral symmetry restoring features of the phase transition. We show that both transitions coincide in QCD while they fall apart in an SU(3) gauge theory coupled to adjoint fermions. We also discuss some results on deconfinement in quenched QCD at non-zero baryon number.