Exploiting the recent lattice results for the infrared gluon propagator with light dynamical quarks, we solve the gap equation for the quark propagator. We thus model the chiral symmetry-breaking mechanism with an increasing number of flavors and study confinement (intimately tied with the analytic properties of QCD Schwinger functions) order parameters. We obtain, with this approach, clear signals of chiral symmetry restoration and deconfinement when the number of light quark flavors exceeds a critical value of $N_f^c\approx 8\pm 1$, in agreement with the state-of-the-art direct lattice analysis of chiral symmetry restoration in QCD.

• Received 23 February 2013

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.88.054003