Spectral Density Study of the SU(3) Deconfining Phase Transition

TL;DR

This paper applies spectral density reweighting to analyze the SU(3) deconfining phase transition, providing precise critical parameters and confirming the first order nature of the transition through finite size scaling.

Contribution

It introduces spectral density reweighting techniques for analyzing phase transitions in lattice gauge theories, with detailed application to SU(3) deconfinement data.

Findings

Determined critical couplings $eta_c$ with high precision.

Confirmed the first order nature of the SU(3) deconfining transition.

Provided estimates for critical exponent $ u$ and latent heat.

Abstract

We present spectral density reweighting techniques adapted to the analysis of a time series of data with a continuous range of allowed values. In a first application we analyze action and Polyakov line data from a Monte Carlo simulation on $L_t L^3 (L_t=2,4)$ lattices for the SU(3) deconfining phase transition. We calculate partition function zeros, as well as maxima of the specific heat and of the order parameter susceptibility. Details and warnings are given concerning i) autocorrelations in computer time and ii) a reliable extraction of partition function zeros. The finite size scaling analysis of these data leads to precise results for the critical couplings $\beta_c$, for the critical exponent $\nu$ and for the latent heat $\triangle s$. In both cases ($L_t=2$ and 4), the first order nature of the transition is substantiated.