Polyakov loop fluctuations and deconfinement in the limit of heavy quarks

We explore the influence of heavy quarks on color deconfinement within an effective model of gluons interacting with dynamical quarks. As the quark mass decreases, the strength of the explicit breaking of the Z(3) symmetry grows, and the first-order transition in the pure SU(3) gauge theory ends in a critical end point. The nature of this critical end point is examined by studying the fluctuations of the Polyakov loop, quantified by the corresponding susceptibilities. The properties of the Polyakov loop fluctuations and their ratios are also studied in QCD with physical quark masses.