Critical point and scale setting in SU(3) plasma: An update

TL;DR

This paper refines the determination of the critical temperature in SU(3) gauge theory using a statistical physics method with minimal finite-volume effects, achieving high-precision continuum extrapolations and a new estimate of Tc relative to LambdaMSbar.

Contribution

It introduces an improved method for accurately estimating the critical temperature of SU(3) plasma near the continuum limit with very small uncertainties.

Findings

Precise estimates of critical coupling betac for Nt up to 20.

Continuum extrapolations of Tc r0 and Tc sqrt{t0} with high accuracy.

Derived value of Tc / LambdaMSbar = 1.24(10).

Abstract

We explore a method developed in statistical physics which has been argued to have exponentially small finite-volume effects, in order to determine the critical temperature Tc of pure SU(3) gauge theory close to the continuum limit. The method allows us to estimate the critical coupling betac of the Wilson action for temporal extents up to Nt ~ 20 with < 0.1% uncertainties. Making use of the scale setting parameters r0 and sqrt{t0} in the same range of beta-values, these results lead to the independent continuum extrapolations Tc r0 = 0.7457(45) and Tc sqrt{t0} = 0.2489(14), with the latter originating from a more convincing fit. Inserting a conversion of r0 from literature (unfortunately with much larger errors) yields Tc / LambdaMSbar = 1.24(10).