# Percolation and Deconfinement in SU(2) Gauge Theory The work has been supported by the TMR network ERBFMRX-CT-970122 and the DFG under grant Ka 1198/4-1.

## 1 INTRODUCTION

The critical behaviour of the Ising model can today be reformulated in terms of percolation theory: magnetization sets in when suitably defined clusters of parallel spins reach the dimensions of the system . In particular, the critical exponents for percolation then become equal to the Ising exponents.

We extend this description of critical behaviour in terms of percolation to the deconfinement transition in SU(2) gauge theory for two space dimensions. We show that the percolation of Polyakov loop clusters (taken to be suitably defined areas of Polyakov loops $`L`$ of the same sign) leads to the correct deconfinement temperature and to the correct critical exponents for the deconfinement.

In contrast to the conventional studies of $`L(T)`$, the use of percolation strenght $`P(T)`$ as deconfinement order parameter remains possible also in the presence of dynamical quarks and could thus constitute a genuine deconfinement order parameter for full QCD.

## 2 PERCOLATION AND CRITICAL <br>PHENOMENA

The percolation problem  is easy to formulate: just place randomly pawns on a chessboard. Regions of adjacent pawns form clusters. Percolation theory deals with the properties of these clusters when the chessboard is infinitely large. If one of the clusters spans the chessboard from one side to the opposite one, we say that the cluster percolates.

Quantitatively, one counts how many pawns belong to each cluster and calculates two quantities:   
$``$ The average cluster size  S, defined as:

$`S={\displaystyle \underset{s}{}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{n_ss^2}{_sn_ss}}\right).`$ (1)   
Here $`n_s`$ is the number of clusters of size $`s`$ and the sums exclude the percolating cluster; this number indicates how big on average the clusters are which do not percolate.   
$``$ The percolation strength  P, defined as:

$`P={\displaystyle \frac{\text{size of the percolating cluster}}{\text{no. of lattice sites}}}.`$ (2)   
By varying the density of our pawns, a kind of phase transition occurs. We pass from a phase of non-percolation to a phase in which one of the clusters percolates. The percolation strength P is the order parameter of this transition: it is zero in the non-percolation phase and is different from zero in the percolation phase. It is particularly interesting to study what happens near the concentration $`p_c`$ where for the first time a percolating cluster is formed.

It turns out that P and S as functions of the density behave respectively like the magnetisation M of the Ising model and its magnetic susceptibility $`\chi `$ as functions of the temperature T (Table 1).

## 3 DROPLET MODEL

The analogy of percolation with second order thermal phase transitions leads to a natural question:

Is it possible to describe these transitions

in terms of percolation ?

The answer to that is given by the droplet model, which reproduces precisely the results of the Ising model.

The droplet model establishes the following correspondence:

$$\begin{array}{ccc}\hfill \text{spins up (down)}& & \text{occupied sites}\hfill \\ \hfill \text{spins down (up)}& & \text{empty sites}\hfill \\ \hfill \begin{array}{c}\hfill \text{spontaneous}\\ \hfill \text{magnetization M}\end{array}& & \begin{array}{c}\text{strength of the}\hfill \\ \text{perc. cluster P}\hfill \end{array}\hfill \\ \hfill \text{susceptibility }\chi & & \text{av. cluster size S}\hfill \end{array}$$

The clusters are basically magnetic domains (either with positive or with negative magnetization). When there is an infinite cluster (percolation), magnetization becomes a global property of the system. 

One has then to find at which temperature percolation occurs and determine the corresponding critical exponents. But this requires one further conceptual feature. If the droplets are defined as clusters of nearest-neighbour spins of the same type (pure site percolation), then they do not lead to the correct Ising results, neither in two dimensions, where the critical points coincide but not the exponents , nor in three dimensions, where even the thresholds are different . In other words, correlations in pure site percolation differ from thermal Ising correlations.

To solve the problem, Coniglio and Klein  introduced a bond probability $`CK=1e^{2J\beta }`$ (J is the spin-spin coupling of the Ising model, $`\beta `$=1/kT, being k the Boltzmann constant). The term $`2J`$ is just the difference $`\mathrm{\Delta }E`$ of energy that we have when we pass from a pair of next-neighbour spins to a one in which one of them is flipped. To define the new ”droplets” one has to connect the parallel nearest-neighbour spins in a cluster with a bond probability CK. Since CK is less than one, not all the parallel spins in a cluster become part of the same droplet.

With the Coniglio-Klein definition, the droplet model reproduces the results of the Ising model, both in two and in three dimensions.

## 4 EXTENDING PERCOLATION TO SU(2) GAUGE THEORY

As it is well known, considerations of symmetry led to the conjecture that SU(2) Gauge Theory and the Ising model belong to the same universality class, that is they have the same critical exponents . This close relation inspired our work.

If we take a typical SU(2) configuration at a certain temperature, there will be areas where L takes negative values, and areas where L takes positive values. Both the positive and the negative ’islands’ can be seen as local regions of deconfinement. But as long as there are finite islands of both signs, deconfinement remains a local phenomenon and the whole system is in the confined phase. When one of this islands percolates, that is it becomes infinite, then we can talk of deconfinement as a global phase of the system.

The main point of our work is to look for a suitable definition of droplets for SU(2). We expect our definition to be similar to the Coniglio-Klein one. The problem is then to find the right bond probability. In contrast to the Ising model, in which the spins can only take two values, we have now for L a continuous range of values. Therefore, if we try to build a bond probability like $`CK=1e^{\beta \mathrm{\Delta }E}`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }E`$ is not the same at any lattice site. Because of that we used a local factor

$$1e^{2\beta _{eff}L_iL_j}.$$
(3)   
Here $`\beta _{eff}`$ is an effective coupling which was shown in certain cases to approximate SU(2) pure gauge theory as a system of nearest-neighbour interacting spins .   

## 5 RESULTS

We performed simulations of SU(2) gauge theory in 2+1 dimensions (2 space dimensions and 1 time dimension) using four different lattice sizes, $`64^2`$, $`96^2`$, $`128^2`$, $`160^2`$. We focused on the case of $`N_\tau =2`$ lattice spacings in the time direction.

Figure 1 shows the average cluster size S for our four lattices at different $`\beta `$ values. The curves clearly peak close to the physical transition, and they shift slightly to the right the bigger the lattice size is. The second step was to perform other simulations in the very narrow range of $`\beta `$ values where our transition seems to occur. We performed a finite size scaling analysis of our data in this smaller range. Figure 2 shows the results of our analysis. The two curves represent the best fit values for the ratios $`\beta /\nu `$ and $`\gamma /\nu `$ calculated for different beta values in the range between $`\beta =3.410`$ and $`\beta =3.457`$. We found the best $`\chi ^2`$ at $`\beta =3.4407`$, where $`\beta /\nu `$ and $`\gamma /\nu `$ take the Ising values $`1/8`$ and $`7/4`$, respectively.

## 6 CONCLUSIONS

We have shown that the deconfinement transition for SU(2) gauge theory in 2+1 dimensions can be described in terms of Polyakov Loop percolation.