Continuum study of deconfinement at finite temperature

Abstract

Deconfinement and chiral symmetry restoration are explored in a confining, renormalisable, Dyson-Schwinger equation model of two-flavour QCD. An order parameter for deconfinement is introduced and used to establish that, in the chiral limit, deconfinement and chiral symmetry restoration are coincident at $T_c\approx 150\,$MeV. The transitions are second order and each has the same critical exponent: $\beta\approx 0.3$. The deconfinement transition is found to exhibit sensitivity to the current-quark mass. $f_\pi$ and $m_\pi$ change by no more than 10\% for $T<0.7\,T_c$, however, as $T\to T_c$, thermal fluctuations cause the pion bound state contribution to the four-point quark-antiquark correlation function to disappear.