Deconfinement and quark–gluon plasma

The theory of confinement and deconfinement is discussed as based on the properties of the QCD vacuum. The latter are described by field correlators of color-electric and color-magnetic fields in the vacuum, which can be calculated analytically and on the lattice. As a result one obtains a self-consistent theory of the confined region in the (μ, T) plane with realistic hadron properties. At the boundary of the confining region, the color-electric confining correlator vanishes, and the remaining correlators describe strong nonperturbative dynamics in the deconfined region with (weakly) bound states. Resulting equation of state for μ = 0, p(T), (ε–3P)/T are in good agreement with lattice data. Phase transition occurs due to evaporation of a part of the color-electric gluon condensate, and the resulting critical temperatures T_c(μ) for different n_f are in good correspondence with available data. (author)