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 σ s 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 σ s between β = 2.5115 and β = 2.74, on large lattices, is demonstrated. Below the critical temperature, T c , σ s remains constant. For temperatures larger than 2T c the temperature dependence can be parametrized by σ s (T) = (0.369 ± 0.014) 2 g 4 (T)T 2 , where g(T) is a 2-loop running coupling constant with the scale parameter determined as Λ T = (0.076 ± 0.013)T c .