Connection between chiral symmetry restoration and deconfinement

We propose a simple explanation for the connection between chiral symmetry restoration and deconfinement in QCD at high temperature. In the Higgs description of the QCD vacuum both spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking and effective gluon masses are generated by the condensate of a color octet quark-antiquark pair. The transition to the high-temperature state proceeds by the melting of this condensate. Quarks and gluons become (approximately)...