An analytical relation between confinement and chiral symmetry breaking

Abstract

We study the relation between quark confinement and spontaneous chiral-symmetry breaking directly in QCD. In lattice QCD formalism, we derive an analytical gauge-invariant relation between the Polyakov loop $\langle L_P \rangle$ and the Dirac eigenvalues $\lambda_n$, i.e., $\langle L_P \rangle \propto \sum_n \lambda_n^{N_t -1} \langle n|\hat U_4|n \rangle$, on a temporally odd-number lattice, where the temporal lattice size $N_t$ is odd. Here, $|n \rangle$ denotes the Dirac eigenmode, i.e., $\not D|n \rangle=i\lambda_n|n \rangle$, and $\hat U_4$ the temporal link-variable operator. We here use an ordinary square lattice with the normal periodic boundary condition for link-variables $U_\mu(s)$ in the temporal direction. Because of the factor $\lambda_n^{N_t -1}$ in the analytical relation, the contribution of low-lying Dirac modes to the Polyakov loop is negligibly small in both confined and deconfined phases, while the low-lying Dirac modes are essential for chiral symmetry breaking. Also, in lattice QCD simulations, we numerically confirm the analytical relation, non-zero finiteness of $\langle n|\hat U_4|n \rangle$ for each Dirac mode, and negligibly small contribution of low-lying Dirac modes to the Polyakov loop. Thus, we conclude that low-lying Dirac modes are not essential for confinement, which indicates no direct one-to-one correspondence between confinement and chiral symmetry breaking in QCD.