Finite Volume Corrections to the SU(3) Deconfining Temperature due to a Confined Exterior

Abstract

Deconfined regions in relativistic heavy ion collisions are limited to small volumes surrounded by a confined exterior. Using the geometry of a double layered torus, we keep an outside temperature slightly lower than the inside temperature, so that both regions are in the SU(3) scaling region. Deconfined volume sizes are chosen to be in a range typical for such volumes created at the BNL RHIC. Even with small temperature differences a dependence of the (pseudo) deconfining temperature on a colder surrounding temperature is clearly visible. For temporal lattice sizes Ntau=4, 6 and 8 we find consistency with SU(3) scaling behavior for the measured transition temperature signals.