Finite-temperature Yang-Mills theories with the density of states method: Toward the continuum limit

A first-order, confinement/deconfinement phase transition appears in the finite temperature behavior of many non-Abelian gauge theories. These theories play an important role in proposals for completion of the Standard Model of particle physics, hence the phase transition might have occurred in the early stages of evolution of our Universe, leaving behind a detectable relic stochastic background of gravitational waves. Lattice field theory studies implementing the density of states method have the potential to provide detailed information about the phase transition, and measure the parameters determining the gravitational-wave power spectrum, by overcoming some of the challenges faced by importance-sampling methods. We assess this potential for a representative choice of Yang-Mills theory with <a:math xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <a:mi>S</a:mi> <a:mi>p</a:mi> <a:mo stretchy="false">(</a:mo> <a:mn>4</a:mn> <a:mo stretchy="false">)</a:mo> </a:math> gauge group. We characterize its finite-temperature, first-order phase transition, in the thermodynamic (infinite volume) limit, for two different choices of number of sites in the compact time direction, hence taking the first steps toward the continuum limit extrapolation. We demonstrate the persistence of nonperturbative phenomena associated to the first-order phase transition: coexistence of states, metastability, latent heat, surface tension. We find consistency between several different strategies for the extraction of the volume-dependent critical coupling, hence assessing the size of systematic effects. We also determine the minimum choice of ratio between spatial and time extent of the lattice that allows one to identify the contribution of the surface tension to the free energy. We observe that this ratio scales nontrivially with the time extent of the lattice, and comment on the implications for future high-precision numerical studies.