Abstract
In this brief report we compare the predictions of a recent next-to-next-to-leading order hard-thermal-loop perturbation theory (HTLpt) calculation of the QCD trace anomaly to available lattice data. We focus on the trace anomaly scaled by in two cases: and . When using the canonical value of for the renormalization scale, we find that for Yang-Mills theory () agreement between HTLpt and lattice data for the -scaled trace anomaly begins at temperatures on the order of , while when including quarks () agreement begins already at temperatures above . In both cases we find that at very high temperatures the -scaled trace anomaly increases with temperature in accordance with the predictions of HTLpt.
- Received 16 June 2011
- Corrected 19 October 2011
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.84.087703
© 2011 American Physical Society
Corrections
19 October 2011