Induced Universal Properties and Deconfinement

We propose a general strategy to determine universal properties induced by a nearby phase transition on a non-order parameter field. We use a general renormalizable Lagrangian, which contains the order parameter and a non-order parameter field, and respects all the symmetries present. 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 infrared dominated and can be used to determine properties of the phase transition. We predict a universal behavior for the screening mass of a generic singlet field, and show how to extract relevant information from such a quantity. We also demonstrate that the pole mass of the non-order parameter field is not infrared sensitive. 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, more specifically the derivatives of these, provides an efficient and sufficient way to experimentally uncover the deconfining phase transition and its features.