  A phenomenological description for confinement of fractionalized excitations
is proposed in the gauge theory approach for doped Mott insulators. Introducing
the Polyakov-loop parameter into an SU(2) gauge theory for the t-J model, we
show that electron excitations emerge below the so-called coherence
temperature, resulting from confinement of spinons and holons via the formation
of the Polyakov loop. Remarkably, such confined electrons turn out to exhibit
non-Fermi liquid physics without quantum criticality, yielding the electric
resistivity in quantitative agreement with experimental data. The Higgs phase
is not allowed due to confinement, suggesting a possible novel mechanism of
superconductivity in the strong coupling approach.
