  It is usual to study confinement via quantum chromodynamics (QCD) alone. The
deconfinement transition of the pure gauge theory (i.e. with static quarks) is
then characterized by the breaking of center symmetry. Center vortices offer an
intuitive and quantitative description of the transition. Dynamical quarks
explicitly break center symmetry, and the phase transition becomes a crossover.
However, it may be misleading to study QCD in isolation. Quarks also carry
fractional electric charge. This bestows the Standard Model with a global
center symmetry that combines color center phases with an appropriate
electromagnetic phase. Is this symmetry relevant to confinement? We begin our
investigation by studying a 2-color model of QCD with half-integer electrically
charged quarks.
