Phase diagram of 3D SU(3) gauge-adjoint Higgs system and C- violation in hot QCD

Abstract

Thermally reduced QCD leads to three dimensional SU(3) gaugefields coupled to an adjoint scalar field $A_0$. We compute the effective potential in the one-loop approximation and evaluate the VEV's of $TrA_0^2$ and $TrA_0^3$. In the Higgs phase not only the former, but also the latter has a VEV. This happens where the SU(3) gauge symmetry is broken minimally with U(2) still unbroken. The VEV of the cubic invariant breaks charge conjugation and CP. It is plausible that in the Higgs phase one has a transition for large enough Higgs selfcoupling to a region where $TrA_0^3$ has no VEV and where the gaugesymmetry is broken maximally to $U(1)\times U(1)$. For a number of colours larger than 3 an even richer phase structure is possible.