Deconfining by Winding: The Magnetic Monopole Vacua at High Temperatures

Abstract

Characterizing the vacuum of a thermalized SU(3) Yang-Mills theory in the dual Ginzburg-Landau description, the possibility of topologically nontrivial, classical monopole fields in the deconfining phase is explored. These fields are assumed to be Bogomoln'yi-Prasad-Sommerfield (BPS) saturated solutions along the compact, euclidean time dimension. A corresponding, gauge invariant monopole interaction is constructed. The model passes first tests. In particular, a reasonable value for the critical temperature is obtained, and the partial persistence of nonperturbative features in the deconfining phase of SU(3) Yang-Mills theory, as it is measured on the lattice, follows naturally.