Cluster percolation and thermal critical behavior Original Research Article

Continuous phase transitions in spin systems can be formulated as percolation of suitably defined clusters. We review this equivalence and then discuss how in a similar way, the color deconfinement transition in SU(2) gauge theory can be treated as a percolation phenomenon. In the presence of an external field, spin systems cease to show thermal critical behavior, but the geometric percolation transition persists (Kertész line). For H≠0, we study the relation between percolation and pseudocritical behavior, both for continuous and first order transitions, and show that it leads to the necessity of an H-dependent cluster definition. A viable formulation of this kind could serve as a definition of deconfinement in QCD with dynamical quarks.