Exploring the gluoNc plasma Original Research Article

We report lattice computations in SU(Nc) pure gauge theory, where Nc is increased beyond the physical value of 3. We demonstrate two-loop scaling of Tc, thus obtaining the variation of View the MathML source with Nc, and fixing the temperature scale. We study the equation of state of the gluoNc plasma, the conformal anomaly, and the approach to the weak coupling theory. We find that the weak-coupling prediction is always closer to the lattice data than the conformal field theory is.