Abstract
In this paper the smallest thermal screening mass associated with the correlator of the -odd operator, , is determined in strongly coupled non-Abelian gauge plasmas which are holographically dual to nonconformal, bottom-up gravity theories. These holographic models are constructed to describe the thermodynamical properties of plasmas near deconfinement at large , and we identify this thermal mass with the Debye screening mass . In this class of nonconformal models with a first-order deconfinement transition at the Debye screening mass displays the same behavior found for the expectation value of the Polyakov loop (which we also compute) jumping from zero below to a nonzero value just above the transition. In the case of a crossover phase transition, has a minimum similar to that found for the speed of sound squared . This holographic framework is also used to evaluate as a function of in a strongly coupled conformal gauge plasma dual to Gauss–Bonnet gravity. In this case, decreases with increasing in accordance with extrapolations from weak coupling calculations.
9 More- Received 8 December 2014
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.90.115028
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