Behavior of non-critical fields and deconfinement

We propose a strategy to determine interesting features induced by a nearby phase transition on a non-order parameter field. We use a renormalizable lagrangian, which contains the order parameter and a non-order parameter field, and respects all the symmetries present in the theory. We investigate the case in which the order parameter field depends only on space coordinates, and the case in which this field is also time-dependent. We find that the spatial correlator of the non-order parameter field, in both cases, is affected by the nearby phase transition. As a result the screening mass of the singlet field can be used to investigate properties of the phase transition. We also demonstrate that the pole mass of the non-order parameter field is not affected by the phase transition. Our results can be applied to any continuous phase transition. As an example, we consider the deconfining transition in pure Yang-Mills theory, and show that our findings are supported by lattice data. Our analysis suggests that monitoring the spatial correlators of different hadron species can be useful to experimentally uncover the deconfining phase transition and some of its features. © SISSA/ISAS 2004.