Motivated by the recent high-precision lattice data on Yang-Mills equations of state, we propose an effective theory of SU(3) gluonic matter. The theory is constructed based on the center and scale symmetries and their dynamical breaking, so that the interplay between color-electric and color-magnetic gluons is included coherently. We suggest that the magnetic gluon condensate changes its thermal behavior qualitatively above the critical temperature as a consequence of matching to the dimensionally reduced magnetic theories. We consider thermodynamics in the mean field approximation and discuss the consequences for the interaction measure.

• Received 16 August 2013

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.89.014031