COMPUTATION OF THE SPATIAL STRING TENSION IN HIGH TEMPERATURE SU(2) GAUGE THEORY

Abstract

A detailed investigation of the temperature dependence of the spatial string tension σs in SU(2) gauge theory is presented. A sustained performance of 3 GFLOPS on a 64K Connection Machine CM-2 equivalent has been achieved. Scaling of σs between β = 2.5115 and β = 2.74, on large lattices, is demonstrated. Below the critical temperature, Tc, σs remains constant. For temperatures larger than 2Tc the temperature dependence can be parametrized by σs(T) = (0.369 ± 0.014)2g4(T)T2, where g(T) is a 2-loop running coupling constant with the scale parameter determined as ΛT = (0.076 ± 0.013)Tc.