Dynamical restoration of ZN symmetry in SU(N) + Higgs theories

AbstractWe study the ZN symmetry in SU(N) + Higgs theories with the Higgs field in the fundamental representation. The distributions of the Polyakov loop show that the ZN symmetry is explicitly broken in the Higgs phase. On the other hand inside the Higgs symmetric phase the Polyakov loop distributions and other physical observables exhibit the ZN symmetry. This effective realization of the ZN symmetry in the theory changes the nature of the confinement–deconfinement transition. We argue that the ZN symmetry will lead to time independent topological defect solutions in the Higgs symmetric deconfined phase which will play important role at high temperatures