Gravity seminar - Masanori Hanada Seminar

Abstract: We argue that the confined and deconfined phases in Yang-Mills theories are connected by the partially deconfined phase. It can be stable or unstable depending on the detail of the theory, and when it is unstable, it is the gauge theory counterpart of the small black hole via holography. The partial deconfinement is closely related to the Gross-Witten-Wadia transition. We speculate that QCD at finite baryon density has the partially deconfined phase as unstable phase with negative specific heat, and hence the experiments aimed for the QCD critical point search are natural places to see the evaporating black hole a la Hawking via holography. To understand the mechanism of the partial deconfinement, the similarity between the stringy description of deconfinement and the mathematical model of the collective behavior of ants is instructive: D-brane is ant, open string is pheromone, and the black hole is ant trail. The ants exhibit essentially the same phase diagrams as black hole and gauge theory, depending on the parameters determined by the environment around the colony.