Adjoint Non-abelian Coulomb Gas at Large N

The non-Abelian analog of the classical Coulomb gas is discussed. The statistical mechanics of arrays of classical particles which transform under various representations of a non-Abelian gauge group and which interact through non-Abelian electric fields are considered. The problem is formulated on the lattice and, for the case of adjoint charges, it is solved in the large N limit. The explicit solution exhibits a first order confinement-de-confinement phase transition with computable properties. In one dimension, the solution has a continuum limit which describes 1+1-dimensional quantum chromodynamics (QCD) with heavy adjoint matter.