Quarks, monopoles and dyons at large N

We study a system of external particles of various charges in N = 4 super Yang-Mills in the large N limit at finite temperature. We demonstrate that at high enough temperature partial or complete screening of the particles can occur. At zero temperature the total electric or magnetic charge cannot be screened, while higher multipole moments of these charges can be screened. The specific case of a quark, a monopole and a dyon is worked out and the above properties are verified. We also discuss the free energy of isolated particles and show that their entropy is independent of the temperature. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.