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 colour-electric and colour-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 (mu,T) plane with realistic hadron properties. At the boundary of the confining region, the colour-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 mu=0, p(T), (epsilon-3P)/T are in good agreement with lattice data. Phase transition occurs due to evaporation of a part of the colour-electric gluon condensate, and the resulting critical temperatures T_c(mu) for different n_f are in good correspondence with available data.