The glueball spectrum of SU(3) gauge theory in 3 + 1 dimensions

Abstract

We calculate the low-lying glueball spectrum of the SU(3) lattice gauge theory in 3 + 1 dimensions for the range β ≤ 6.50 using the standard plaquette action. We do so for states in all the representations R of the cubic rotation group, and for both values of parity P and charge conjugation C. We extrapolate these results to the continuum limit of the theory using the confining string tension σ as our energy scale. We also present our results in units of the r0 scale and, from that, in terms of physical ‘GeV’ units. For a number of these states we are able to identify their continuum spins J with very little ambiguity. We also calculate the topological charge Q of the lattice gauge fields so as to show that we have sufficient ergodicity throughout our range of β, and we calculate the multiplicative renormalisation of Q as a function of β. We also obtain the continuum limit of the SU(3) topological susceptibility.