Magnetic charge superselection in the deconfined phase of Yang-Mills theory

The vacuum expectation value of an operator carrying magnetic charge is studied numerically for temperatures above the deconfinement temperature in SU(2) and SU(3) gauge theory. By analyzing its finite size behaviour, this is found to be exactly zero in the thermodynamical limit for any T > T_c whenever the magnetic charge of the operator is different from zero. These results show that magnetic charge is superselected in the hot phase of quenched QCD.