The spatial string tension and dimensional reduction in QCD Original Research Article

The spatial string tension is calculated in 2+1 flavor QCD with a physical strange quark mass and almost physical light quark masses on lattices with Nt=4,6 and 8. The results are compared with predictions of dimensionally reduced QCD. They suggest that dimensional reduction works also in the presence of light dynamical quarks down to temperatures of about 1.5Tc.