Conformal perturbation theory confronts lattice results in the vicinity of a critical point

Abstract

We study the accuracy and predictive power of conformal perturbation theory by a comparison with lattice results in the neighborhood of the finite-temperature deconfinement transition of SU(2) Yang-Mills theory, assuming that the infrared properties of this non-Abelian gauge theory near criticality can be described by the Ising model. The results of this comparison show that conformal perturbation theory yields quantitatively accurate predictions in a broad temperature range. We discuss the implications of these findings for the description of the critical point (belonging to the same universality class) of another strongly coupled, nonsupersymmetric non-Abelian gauge theory: the critical end point in the phase diagram of QCD at finite temperature and finite quark chemical potential.