1:30 pm VIA ZOOM
Delayed Deconfinement and the Hawking-Page Transition, Luigi Tizzano, SCGP
We revisit the confinement/deconfinement transition in N=4 super Yang-Mills (SYM) theory and its relation to the Hawking-Page transition in gravity. Recently there has been substantial progress on counting the microstates of 1/16-BPS extremal black holes. In this context, we discuss a phenomenon in complex matrix models which we call "delayed deconfinement". It turns out that when the action is complex, due to destructive interference, tachyonic modes do not necessarily condense. We demonstrate this phenomenon in a simple unitary matrix model and finally in the context of N=4 SYM. Delayed deconfinement implies a first-order transition, in contrast to the more familiar cases of higher-order transitions in unitary matrix models. We determine the deconfinement line and find remarkable agreement with the prediction of gravity.