The Spatial String Tension and Dimensional Reduction in QCD

Understand

We calculate the spatial string tension in (2+1) flavor QCD with physical strange quark mass and almost physical light quark masses using lattices with temporal extent N_tau=4,6 and 8.

• We compare our results on the spatial string tension with predictions of dimensionally reduced QCD.
• This suggests that also in the presence of light dynamical quarks dimensional reduction works well down to temperatures 1.5T_c.