New thermodynamic Bethe ansatz equations without strings

We present a computational framework not based on the string hypothesis for the thermodynamics of statistical and quantum field theory models solvable by the Bethe ansatz. In the cases of XXZ Heisenberg chain and the sine-Gordon quantum field theory we derive a single nonlinear integral equation which determines the free energy (or ground-state scaling function). Our approach is very effective at high temperature, and correctly reproduces the low-temperature central charge and the analytic structure of the corrections.