Finite-temperature phase transition of SU(3) gauge theory on Nt=4 and 6 lattices

The deconfining finite-temperature transition of SU(3) gauge theory is studied on the dedicated parallel computer QCDPAX. Monte Carlo simulations are performed on 122×24×4, 242×36×4, 203×6, 243×6, and 362×48×6 lattices with 376 000 to 1 112 000 iterations. The finite size scaling behavior of the first-order transition is confirmed both on the Nt=4 and Nt=6 lattices and clear two-phase structures are observed on spatially large lattices (242×36×4 and 362×48×6). The latent heat at the deconfining transition is estimated both by a direct measurement of the gap on the spatially large lattices and by applying a finite-size scaling law. The results obtained by these two independent methods are remarkably consistent with each other on both the Nt=4 lattices. The latent heat for Nt=6 is much smaller than that for Nt=4 and is about ⅓ of the Stefan-Boltzmann value 8π2/15. The details of the data and the error analysis are presented