Heavy-quark potential in SU(3) lattice gauge theory

The heavy-quark potential for SU(3) pure lattice gauge theory has been determined by Monte Carlo methods on an 8³ ×{} 12 lattice. The potential was constructed by fitting together runs at 12 different bare couplings. A good global description of the results is given by a Coulomb-plus-linear form. In the short-distance region, the strength of the Coulomb term is consistent with the value of the running coupling deduced from QCD phenomenology. At large distances, the linear term gives the string-tension estimate Λ₀√K=0.011±0.003.