Thermodynamics of the strongly interacting gluon plasma in the large-N limit

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We report on our recent study of equilibrium thermodynamic observables in SU(N) gauge theories with N=3, 4, 5, 6 and 8 colors at temperatures T in the range from 0.8 T_c to 3.4 T_c (where T_c denotes the critical deconfinement temperature).

• The results, which show a very weak dependence on the number of colors, are compared with gauge/gravity models of the QCD plasma, including the improved holographic QCD model proposed by Kiritsis and collaborators, and with the supergravity prediction for the entropy density deficit.
• Furthermore, we investigate the possibility that the trace anomaly may receive contributions proportional to T^2 at temperatures close to T_c.
• Finally, we present the extrapolated results for the pressure, trace anomaly, energy and entropy densities in the limit for N going to infinity.