Relation between the chiral and deconfinement phase transitions

Abstract

Lattice QCD simulations at finite temperature have shown that the chiral phase transition in the chiral limit and the deconfinement phase transition in the quenched limit are continuously connected. I emphasize the nontriviality of this result and propose an unconventional scenario which naturally explains the existing lattice data. The continuity of the two phase transitions is a manifestation of the familiar glueball-meson mixing, which can be traced back to the properties of QCD at zero temperature.

Comments: 5 pages, talk given at Strong and Electroweak Matter 2004 (SEWM04), Helsinki, Finland, 16-19 Jun 2004