Center-symmetric effective theory for two-color quark matter

Abstract We revisit the center-symmetric dimensionally reduced effective theory for two-color Yang-Mills theory at high temperature. This effective theory includes an order parameter for deconfinement and thus allows to broaden the range of validity of the conventional three-dimensional effective theory (EQCD) towards the confining phase transition. We extend the previous results by including the effects of massive quarks with nonzero baryon chemical potential. The parameter space of the theory is constrained by leading-order matching to the Polyakov loop effective potential of two-color QCD. Once all the parameters are fixed, the effective theory can provide model-independent predictions for the physics above the deconfinement transition, thus bridging the gap between large-scale numerical simulations and semi-analytical calculations within phenomenological models.