Evidence for quantum chaos in the plasma phase of QCD

Abstract

We investigate the eigenvalue spectrum of the staggered Dirac matrix in SU(3) gauge theory and in full QCD on a $6^3\times 4$ lattice. As a measure of the fluctuation properties of the eigenvalues, we study the nearest-neighbor spacing distribution $P(s)$ for various values of $β$ both in the confinement and in the deconfinement phase. In both phases except far into the deconfinement region, the lattice data agree with the Wigner surmise of random-matrix theory which is indicative of quantum chaos. We do not find signs of a transition to Poisson regularity at the deconfinement phase transition.