Thermodynamics of SU(3) lattice gauge theory Original Research Article

The pressure and the energy density of the SU(3) gauge theory are calculated on lattices with temporal extent Nτ = 4, 6 and 8 and spatial extent Nσ = 16 and 32. The results are then extrapolated to the continuum limit. In the investigated temperature range up to five times Tc we observe a 15% deviation from the ideal gas limit. We also present new results for the critical temperature on lattices with temporal extent Nτ = 8 and 12. At the corresponding critical couplings the string tension is calculated on 324 lattices to fix the temperature scale. An extrapolation to the continuum limit yields Tc/√σ = 0.629(3). We furthermore present results on the electric and magnetic condensates as well as the temperature dependence of the spatial string tension. These observables suggest that the temperature dependent running coupling remains large even at T ≅ 5Tc. For the spatial string tension we find √σs/T=0.566(13)g22(T) with g2 (5Tc) ≅ 1.5.