Partial deconfinement in QCD at N = 3 and N = ∞

Abstract

We describe how the general mechanism of partial deconfinement applies to large-N QCD and the partially-deconfined phase inevitably appears between completely-confined and completely-deconfined phases. Furthermore, we propose how the partial deconfinement can be observed in the real-world QCD with SU(3) gauge group. We propose the relationship between the behaviors of the Polyakov loop and other quantities. We test our proposal against lattice simulation data and find a nontrivial matching.