DECONFINEMENT AND QUARK–GLUON PLASMA

Abstract

The theory of confinement and deconfinement is discussed as based on the properties of the QCD vacuum. The latter are described by field correlators of color-electric and color-magnetic fields in the vacuum, which can be calculated analytically and on the lattice. As a result one obtains a self-consistent theory of the confined region in the (μ, T) plane with realistic hadron properties. At the boundary of the confining region, the color-electric confining correlator vanishes, and the remaining correlators describe strong nonperturbative dynamics in the deconfined region with (weakly) bound states. Resulting equation of state for μ = 0, p(T), [Formula: see text] are in good agreement with lattice data. Phase transition occurs due to evaporation of a part of the color-electric gluon condensate, and the resulting critical temperatures Tc(μ) for different nf are in good correspondence with available data.