A study of the phase transition in 4D pure compact U(1) LGT on toroidal and spherical lattices Original Research Article

We have performed a systematic study of the phase transition in the pure compact U(1) lattice gauge theory in the extended coupling parameter space (β, γ) on toroidal and spherical lattices. The observation of a non-zero latent heat in both topologies for all investigated γ ϵ [+0.2, −0.4], together with an exponent νeff ∼ 1d when large enough lattices are considered, lead us to conclude that the phase transition is first order. For negative γ, our results point to an increasingly weak first-order transition as γ is made more negative.