Dynamical restoration of ZN symmetry in SU(N) + Higgs theories

We study the ZNZN symmetry in SU(N)SU(N) + Higgs theories with the Higgs field in the fundamental representation. The distributions of the Polyakov loop show that the ZNZN symmetry is explicitly broken in the Higgs phase. On the other hand inside the Higgs symmetric phase the Polyakov loop distributions and other physical observables exhibit the ZNZN symmetry. This effective realization of the ZNZN symmetry in the theory changes the nature of the confinement–deconfinement transition. We argue that the ZNZN symmetry will lead to time independent topological defect solutions in the Higgs symmetric deconfined phase which will play important role at high temperatures.