Continuum thermodynamics of the SU(N<SUB>c</SUB>) gluon plasma

We study the thermodynamics of SU(N<SUB>c</SUB>) pure gauge theories for N<SUB>c</SUB>=3, 4 and 6. The continuum and thermodynamic limits of bulk quantities such as the pressure (p), energy density (∈) and the entropy density (s) are taken by using several different lattice spacings and volumes. There is no window of temperature in which a nontrivial conformal theory describes bulk thermodynamics. We extract the latent heat of the first-order deconfinement phase transitions and observe good scaling with N<SUB>c</SUB>. For all quantities that we measure, strong N<SUB>c</SUB> scaling holds, except, possibly, very close to the transition temperature, T<SUB>c</SUB>; however we are unable to find strong evidence for scaling with the 't Hooft coupling in thermal quantities at the small values of N<SUB>c</SUB> which we study