QCD trace anomaly

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 T{sup 2} in two cases: N{sub f}=0 and N{sub f}=3. When using the canonical value of {mu}=2{pi}T for the renormalization scale, we find that for Yang-Mills theory (N{sub f}=0) agreement between HTLpt and lattice data for the T{sup 2}-scaled trace anomaly begins at temperatures on the order of 8T{sub c}, while treating the subtracted piece as an interaction term when including quarks (N{sub f}=3) agreement begins already at temperatures above 2T{sub c}. In both cases we find that at very high temperatures the T{sup 2}-scaled trace anomaly increases with temperature in accordance with the predictions of HTLpt.