2013/07/24 by Dominik Smith, Adrian Dumitru, Robert Pisarski +1 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #hep-lat #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.88.054020
published as Phys. Rev. D88, 054020 (2013) · 16 pages, 39 figures
arxiv created 2013/07/24 · arxiv updated 2013/11/06
We simulate SU(2) gauge theory at temperatures ranging from slightly below Tc to roughly 2Tc for two different values of the gauge coupling. Using a histogram method, we extract the effective potential for the Polyakov loop and for the phases of the eigenvalues of the thermal Wilson loop, in both the fundamental and adjoint representations. We show that the classical potential of the fundamental loop can be parametrized within a simple model which includes a Vandermonde potential and terms linear and quadratic in the Polyakov loop. We discuss how parametrizations for the other cases can be obtained from this model.