Deconfinement phase transition in mirror of symmetries

We argue that the deconfinement phase transition in Yang–Mills theories can be viewed as a change of effective non-perturbative degrees of freedom and of symmetries of their interactions. In short, the strings in four dimensions (4d) at temperatures below the critical temperature $T_\mathrm c$ are replaced by particles, or field theories in 3d at $T>T_\mathrm c$. The picture emerges within various approaches based on dual models, lattice data and effective field theoretic models. We concentrate mostly on the lattice data, or the language of quantum geometry.

Received in September 2010