Polyakov loops and monopoles in QCD

Monte Carlo simulations of abelian projection of T ≠ 0 pure lattice QCD show that 1) Polyakov loops written in terms of abelian link fields alone play the role of an order parameter of deconfinement transition, 2) the abelian Polyakov loops are decomposed into contributions from Dirac strings of monopoles and from photons, 3) vanishing of the abelian Polyakov loops in the confinement phase is due to the Dirac strings alone and the photons give a finite contribution in both phases. Moreover, these results appear to hold good with any abelian projection as seen from the studies in the maximally abelian gauge and in various unitary gauges.