Determining the order of SU(3) deconfining phase transition

Abstract

An effective spin model for the finite temperature non-abelian lattice gauge theory is derived. The outcome is the surprising result that only nearest neighbor coupling survives, thus confirming the well known numerical results that the deconfining phase transition of the (3+1)-dimensional $SU(3)$ pure gauge theory is first order.

Latex 9 pages DU-TH-003