The Free Energy of Spherical Bubbles in Lattice Su(3) Gauge Theory

We study the coefficients of the expansion F (R) = 1 3 c3R 3 + 1 2 c2R 2 + c1R of the free energy of spherical bubbles at T = Tc in pure glue QCD using lattice Monte Carlo techniques. The coefficient c3 vanishes at T = Tc and our results suggest that the sign and the order of magnitude of c1 is in agreement with the value c1 = ±32πT 2 c /9 (for hadronic bubbles in quark phase, + for quark bubbles in hadronic phase) computed by Mardor and Svetitsky from the MIT bag model. The parameter c2 is small in agreement with earlier determinations. 1) University of Helsinki, Department of Theoretical Physics, Siltavuorenpenger 20 C, 00170 Helsinki, Finland; kajantie@finuhcb. 2) Research Institute for Theoretical Physics, Siltavuorenpenger 20 C, 00170 Helsinki, Finland; permanent address Universität Bielefeld, Fakultät für Physik, Postfach 8640, D-4800 Bielefeld 1, BRD; [email protected]. 3) CERN/TH, CH-1211 Geneve, Switzerland; rummukai@cernvm.