25.04.2007 (Wednesday)

Topology changing transitions in N=4

Triangular Seminar Timothy J. Hollowood (Swansea)

at:
17:30 KCL
room 2C
abstract:

N=4 SYM is known to have a confinement-deconfinement type phase transition in finite volume as the temperature is raised. This phase transition has been conjectured to smoothly become the Hawking-Page transition between hot AdS space and an AdS black hole as the 't Hooft coupling becomes larger. I show that this phase transition at weak coupling is actually a topology changing transition for the VEVs of the scalar fields and Polyakov loop. This means that the high temperature phase cannot be, as previously thought, the black hole in the dual. I then argue for the existence of a new second order phase transition at a higher temperature to a new phase which has the right symmetries to be identified with the black hole. This is work based on the recent paper hep-th/0703100 with Umut Gursoy, Sean Hartnoll and Prem Kumar.