DECONFINEMENT TRANSITION IN LARGE-N LATTICE GAUGE-THEORY

We study analytically the phase diagram of the pure SU(N) lattice gauge theory at finite temperature, and we attempt to estimate the critical deconfinement temperature. We apply large-hr techniques to the Wilson and to the heat kernel action, and we study the resulting models both in the strong-coupling and in the weak-coupling limits. Using the hear kernel action, we establish an interesting connection between the Douglas-Kazakov phase transition of two-dimensional QCD and the deconfining transition in d dimensions. The analytic results obtained for the critical temperature compare well with Monte Carlo simulations of the full theory in (2 + 1) and in (3 + 1) dimensions.