Quark-gluon plasma as a condensate of Z(3) Wilson lines -: art. no. 111501

Effective theories for the thermal Wilson line are constructed in an SU(N) gauge theory at nonzero temperature. I propose that the order of the deconfining phase transition for Z(N) Wilson lines is governed by the behavior of SU(N) Wilson lines. In a mean field theory, the free energy in the deconfined phase is controlled by the condensate for Z(N) Wilson lines. Numerical simulations on the lattice, and the mean held theory for Z(3) Wilson lines, suggest that about any finite temperature transition in QCD the dominant correlation length increases by a large, uniform factor, of order five.