Abelian chromomagnetic fields and confinement

Abstract

We study vacuum dynamics of SU(3) lattice gauge theory at finite temperature using the lattice Schrödinger functional. The SU(3) vacuum is probed by means of an external constant Abelian chromomagnetic field. We find that by increasing the strength of the applied external field the deconfinement temperature decreases towards zero. This means that strong enough Abelian chromomagnetic fields destroy confinement of color. We discuss some consequences of this phenomenon on confinement and quark stars.

Comments: 10 pages, 3 figures