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Recently, the Budapest-Marseille-Wuppertal collaboration achieved sub-percent precision in the evaluation of the lowest-order hadronic vacuum polarization contribution to the muon $g_\mu-2$ (arXiv:hep-lat/2002.12347v3). At this level of precision, isospin-symmetric QCD is not sufficient. In this contribution we review how QED and strong-isospin-breaking effects have been included in our work. Isospin breaking is implemented by expanding the relevant correlation functions to second order in the electric charge $e$ and to first order in $m_u-m_d$. The correction terms are then computed using isospin-symmetric configurations. The choice of this approach allows us to better distribute the available computing resources among the various contributions., Comment: talk presented at the 38th International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory, LATTICE2021 26th-30th July, 2021 Zoom/Gather@Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Taylor expansion of the equation of state of QCD suffers from shortcomings at chemical potentials $\mu_B \geq (2-2.5)T$. First, one faces difficulties inherent in performing such an expansion with a limited number of coefficients; second, higher order coefficients determined from lattice calculations suffer from a poor signal-to-noise ratio. In this work, we present a novel scheme for extrapolating the equation of state of QCD to finite, real chemical potential that can extend its reach further than previous methods. We present continuum extrapolated lattice results for the new expansion coefficients and show the thermodynamic observables up to $\mu_B/T\le3.5$., Comment: 13 pages, 10 figures

It is of vital importance to understand and track the dynamics of rapidly unfolding epidemics. The health and economic consequences of the current COVID-19 pandemic provide a poignant case. Here we point out that since they are based on differential equations, the most widely used models of epidemic spread are plagued by an approximation that is not justified in the case of the current COVID-19 pandemic. Taking the example of data from New York City, we show that currently used models significantly underestimate the initial basic reproduction number ($R_0$). The correct description, based on integral equations, can be implemented in most of the reported models and it much more accurately accounts for the dynamics of the epidemic after sharp changes in $R_0$ due to restrictive public congregation measures. It also provides a novel way to determine the incubation period, and most importantly, as we demonstrate for several countries, this method allows an accurate monitoring of $R_0$ and thus a fine-tuning of any restrictive measures. Integral equation based models do not only provide the conceptually correct description, they also have more predictive power than differential equation based models, therefore we do not see any reason for using the latter., Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures

We compute the leading order hadronic vacuum polarization (LO-HVP) contribution to the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon, $(g_\mu-2)$, using lattice QCD. Calculations are performed with four flavors of 4-stout-improved staggered quarks, at physical quark masses and at six values of the lattice spacing down to 0.064~fm. All strong isospin breaking and electromagnetic effects are accounted for to leading order. The infinite-volume limit is taken thanks to simulations performed in volumes of sizes up to 11~fm. Our result for the LO-HVP contribution to $(g_\mu-2)$ has a total uncertainty of 0.8\%. Compared to the result of the dispersive approach for this contribution, ours significantly reduces the tension between the standard model prediction for $(g_\mu-2)$ and its measurement., Comment: Accepted for publication. 116 pages, 34 figures with main, methods and supplementary information. v2: added finite time extent corrections, analyzed new configurations and included suggestions from the community (regarding the continuum limit, scale setting and running of the fine structure constant). v3: revised analysis to take into account referees' comments. Original conclusions unchanged

We study the density of states method as well as reweighting to explore the low temperature phase diagram of QCD at finite baryon chemical potential. We use four flavors of staggered quarks, a tree-level Symanzik improved gauge action and four stout smearing steps on lattices with $N_s=4,6,8$ and $N_t=6 - 16$. We compare our results to that of the phase quenched ensemble and also determine the pion and nucleon masses. In the density of states approach we applied pion condensate or gauge action density fixing. We found that the density of states method performs similarly to reweighting. At $T \approx 100$ MeV, we found an indication of the onset of the quark number density at around $\mu/m_N \sim 0.16 - 0.18$ on $6^4$ lattices at $\beta=2.9$.

The QCD equation of state at finite baryon density is studied in the framework of a Cluster Expansion Model (CEM), which is based on the fugacity expansion of the net baryon density. The CEM uses the two leading Fourier coefficients, obtained from lattice simulations at imaginary $\mu_B$, as the only model input and permits a closed analytic form. Excellent description of the available lattice data at both $\mu_B = 0$ and at imaginary $\mu_B$ is obtained. We also demonstrate how the Fourier coefficients can be reconstructed from baryon number susceptibilities., Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures. Contribution to the Quark Matter 2018 conference proceedings

We present first evidence for the Landau level structure of Dirac eigenmodes in full QCD for nonzero background magnetic fields, based on first principles lattice simulations using staggered quarks. Our approach involves the identification of the lowest Landau level modes in two dimensions, where topological arguments ensure a clear separation of these modes from energetically higher states, and an expansion of the full four-dimensional modes in the basis of these two-dimensional states. We evaluate various fermionic observables including the quark condensate and the spin polarization in this basis to find how much the lowest Landau level contributes to them. The results allow for a deeper insight into the dynamics of quarks and gluons in background magnetic fields and may be directly compared to low-energy models of QCD employing the lowest Landau level approximation., Comment: 21 pages, 19 figures

This Workshop brought top experts, researchers, postdocs, and students from high-energy heavy ion interactions, lattice QCD and hadronic physics communities together. YSTAR2016 discussed the impact of "missing" hyperon resonances on QCD thermodynamics, on freeze-out in heavy ion collisions, on the evolution of early universe, and on the spectroscopy of strange particles. Recent studies that compared lattice QCD predictions of thermodynamic properties of quark-gluon plasma at freeze-out with calculations based on statistical hadron resonance gas models as well as experimentally measured ratios between yields of different hadron species in heavy ion collisions provide indirect evidence for the presence of "missing" resonances in all of these contexts. The aim of the YSTAR2016 Workshop was to sharpen these comparisons and advance our understanding of the formation of strange hadrons from quarks and gluons microseconds after the Big Bang and in todays experiments at LHC and RHIC as well as at future facilities like FAIR, J-PARC and KL at JLab. It was concluded that the new initiative to create a secondary beam of neutral kaons at JLab will make a bridge between the hardron spectroscopy, heavy-ion experiments and lattice QCD studies addressing some major issues related to thermodynamics of the early universe and cosmology in general., Comment: 167 pages, Editors: M. Amaryan, E. Chudakov, K. Rajagopal, C. Ratti, J. Ritman, and I. Strakovsky One more contribution was added

We determine the equation of state of QCD at finite chemical potential, to order $(\mu_B/T)^6$, for a system of 2+1 quark flavors. The simulations are performed at the physical mass for the light and strange quarks on several lattice spacings; the results are continuum extrapolated using lattices of up to $N_t=16$ temporal resolution. The QCD pressure and interaction measure are calculated along the isentropic trajectories in the $(T,~\mu_B)$ plane corresponding to the RHIC Beam Energy Scan collision energies. Their behavior is determined through analytic continuation from imaginary chemical potentials of the baryonic density. We also determine the Taylor expansion coefficients around $\mu_B=0$ from the simulations at imaginary chemical potentials. Strangeness neutrality and charge conservation are imposed, to match the experimental conditions., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures

We present a full result for the equation of state (EoS) in 2+1+1 (up/down, strange and charm quarks are present) flavour lattice QCD. We extend this analysis and give the equation of state in 2+1+1+1 flavour QCD. In order to describe the evolution of the universe from temperatures several hundreds of GeV to several tens of MeV we also include the known effects of the electroweak theory and give the effective degree of freedoms. As another application of lattice QCD we calculate the topological susceptibility (chi) up to the few GeV temperature region. These two results, EoS and chi, can be used to predict the dark matter axion's mass in the post-inflation scenario and/or give the relationship between the axion's mass and the universal axionic angle, which acts as a initial condition of our universe., Comment: pdflatex, 40 figures; Section on experimental setups added, small corrections

We calculate the QCD cross-over temperature, the equation of state and fluctuations of conserved charges at finite density by analytical continuation from imaginary to real chemical potentials. Our calculations are based on new continuum extrapolated lattice simulations using the 4stout staggered actions with a lattice resolution up to $N_t=16$. The simulation parameters are tuned such that the strangeness neutrality is maintained, as it is in heavy ion collisions., Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, Proceedings of the Quark Matter 2015 conference, Kobe, Japan

We present a QCD calculation of the $u$, $d$ and $s$ scalar quark contents of nucleons based on $47$ lattice ensembles with $N_f = 2+1$ dynamical sea quarks, $5$ lattice spacings down to $0.054\,\text{fm}$, lattice sizes up to $6\,\text{fm}$ and pion masses down to $120\,\text{MeV}$. Using the Feynman-Hellmann theorem, we obtain $f^N_{ud} = 0.0405(40)(35)$ and $f^N_s = 0.113(45)(40)$, which translates into $\sigma_{\pi N}=38(3)(3)\,\text{MeV}$, $\sigma_{sN}=105(41)(37)\,\text{MeV}$ and $y_N=0.20(8)(8)$ for the sigma terms and the related ratio, where the first errors are statistical and the second are systematic. Using isospin relations, we also compute the individual up and down quark contents of the proton and neutron (results in the main text)., Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures

We study the finite temperature transition in QCD with two flavors of dynamical fermions at a pseudoscalar pion mass of about 350 MeV. We use lattices with temporal extent of $N_t$=8, 10 and 12. For the first time in the literature a continuum limit is carried out for several observables with dynamical overlap fermions. These findings are compared with results obtained within the staggered fermion formalism at the same pion masses and extrapolated to the continuum limit. The presented results correspond to fixed topology and its effect is studied in the staggered case. Nice agreement is found between the overlap and staggered results., Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures

Axions are one of the most attractive dark matter candidates. The evolution of their number density in the early universe can be determined by calculating the topological susceptibility $\chi(T)$ of QCD as a function of the temperature. Lattice QCD provides an ab initio technique to carry out such a calculation. A full result needs two ingredients: physical quark masses and a controlled continuum extrapolation from non-vanishing to zero lattice spacings. We determine $\chi(T)$ in the quenched framework (infinitely large quark masses) and extrapolate its values to the continuum limit. The results are compared with the prediction of the dilute instanton gas approximation (DIGA). A nice agreement is found for the temperature dependence, whereas the overall normalization of the DIGA result still differs from the non-perturbative continuum extrapolated lattice results by a factor of order ten. We discuss the consequences of our findings for the prediction of the amount of axion dark matter., Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures

We study lattice QCD at non-vanishing chemical potential using the complex Langevin equation. We compare the results with multi-parameter reweighting both from $\mu=0$ and phase quenched ensembles. We find a good agreement for lattice spacings below $\approx$0.15 fm. On coarser lattices the complex Langevin approach breaks down. Four flavors of staggered fermions are used on $N_t=4, 6$ and 8 lattices. For one ensemble we also use two flavors to investigate the effects of rooting., Comment: 10 pages, 11 figures, PRD version, minor changes

We present the crossover line between the quark gluon plasma and the hadron gas phases for small real chemical potentials. First we determine the effect of imaginary values of the chemical potential on the transition temperature using lattice QCD simulations. Then we use various formulas to perform an analytic continuation to real values of the baryo-chemical potential. Our data set maintains strangeness neutrality to match the conditions of heavy ion physics. The systematic errors are under control up to $\mu_B\approx 300$ MeV. For the curvature of the transition line we find that there is an approximate agreement between values from three different observables: the chiral susceptibility, chiral condensate and strange quark susceptibility. The continuum extrapolation is based on $N_t=$ 10, 12 and 16 lattices. By combining the analysis for these three observables we find, for the curvature, the value $\kappa = 0.0149 \pm 0.0021$., Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures, revised version

We calculate second- and fourth-order cumulants of conserved charges in a temperature range stretching from the QCD transition region towards the realm of (resummed) perturbation theory. We perform lattice simulations with staggered quarks; the continuum extrapolation is based on $N_t=10\dots24$ in the crossover-region and $N_t=8\dots16$ at higher temperatures. We find that the Hadron Resonance Gas model predictions describe the lattice data rather well in the confined phase. At high temperatures (above $\sim$250 MeV) we find agreement with the three-loop Hard Thermal Loop results., Comment: 18 pages revtex, 13 figures

Electromagnetic effects are increasingly being accounted for in lattice quantum chromodynamics computations. Because of their long-range nature, they lead to large finite-size effects over which it is important to gain analytical control. Nonrelativistic effective field theories provide an efficient tool to describe these effects. Here we argue that some care has to be taken when applying these methods to quantum electrodynamics in a finite volume., Comment: 8 LaTeX pages, 2 figures

For a K3 surface S, we study motivic invariants of stable pairs moduli spaces associated to 3-fold thickenings of S. We conjecture suitable deformation and divisibility invariances for the Betti realization. Our conjectures, together with earlier calculations of Kawai-Yoshioka, imply a full determination of the theory in terms of the Hodge numbers of the Hilbert schemes of points of S. The work may be viewed as the third in a sequence of formulas starting with Yau-Zaslow and Katz-Klemm-Vafa (each recovering the former). Numerical data suggest the motivic invariants are linked to the Mathieu M_24 moonshine phenomena. The KKV formula and the Pairs/Noether-Lefschetz correspondence together determine the BPS counts of K3-fibered Calabi-Yau 3-folds in fiber classes in terms of modular forms. We propose a framework for a refined P/NL correspondence for the motivic invariants of K3-fibered CY 3-folds. For the STU model, a complete conjecture is presented., Comment: 47 pages, Appendix by R. P. Thomas on the Gopakumar-Vafa approach, Footnote 26 corrected using recent results of J. Shen and Q. Yin

The existence and stability of atoms rely on the fact that neutrons are more massive than protons. The measured mass difference is only 0.14\% of the average of the two masses. A slightly smaller or larger value would have led to a dramatically different universe. Here, we show that this difference results from the competition between electromagnetic and mass isospin breaking effects. We performed lattice quantum-chromodynamics and quantum-electrodynamics computations with four nondegenerate Wilson fermion flavors and computed the neutron-proton mass-splitting with an accuracy of $300$ kilo-electron volts, which is greater than $0$ by $5$ standard deviations. We also determine the splittings in the $\Sigma$, $\Xi$, $D$ and $\Xi_{cc}$ isospin multiplets, exceeding in some cases the precision of experimental measurements., Comment: 57 pages, 15 figures, 6 tables, revised version

We determine the equation of state of 2+1-flavor QCD with physical quark masses, in the presence of a constant (electro)magnetic background field on the lattice. To determine the free energy at nonzero magnetic fields we develop a new method, which is based on an integral over the quark masses up to asymptotically large values where the effect of the magnetic field can be neglected. The method is compared to other approaches in the literature and found to be advantageous for the determination of the equation of state up to large magnetic fields. Thermodynamic observables including the longitudinal and transverse pressure, magnetization, energy density, entropy density and interaction measure are presented for a wide range of temperatures and magnetic fields, and provided in ancillary files. The behavior of these observables confirms our previous result that the transition temperature is reduced by the magnetic field. We calculate the magnetic susceptibility and permeability, verifying that the thermal QCD medium is paramagnetic around and above the transition temperature, while we also find evidence for weak diamagnetism at low temperatures., Comment: 31 pages, 24 figures. v2: discussion about B- and Phi-schemes extended, references added, minor corrections in the text. Version to appear in JHEP

Recent results for moments of multiplicity distributions of net-protons and net-electric charge from the STAR collaboration are compared to lattice QCD results for higher order fluctuations of baryon number and electric charge by the Wuppertal-Budapest collaboration, with the purpose of extracting the freeze-out temperature and chemical potential. All lattice simulations are performed for a system of 2+1 dynamical quark flavors, at the physical mass for light and strange quarks; all results are continuum extrapolated. We show that it is possible to extract an upper value for the freeze-out temperature, as well as precise baryo-chemical potential values corresponding to the four highest collision energies of the experimental beam energy scan. Consistency between the freeze-out parameters obtained from baryon number and electric charge fluctuations is found. The freeze-out chemical potentials are now in agreement with the statistical hadronization model., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, references added, discussion added to the introduction, results unchanged

We study local CP-violation on the lattice by measuring the local correlation between the topological charge density and the electric dipole moment of quarks, induced by a constant external magnetic field. This correlator is found to increase linearly with the external field, with the coefficient of proportionality depending only weakly on temperature. Results are obtained on lattices with various spacings, and are extrapolated to the continuum limit after the renormalization of the observables is carried out. This renormalization utilizes the gradient flow for the quark and gluon fields. Our findings suggest that the strength of local CP-violation in QCD with physical quark masses is about an order of magnitude smaller than a model prediction based on nearly massless quarks in domains of constant gluon backgrounds with topological charge. We also show numerical evidence that the observed local CP-violation correlates with spatially extended electric dipole structures in the QCD vacuum., Comment: 19 pages, 7 figures. Additional lattice results about the induced electric dipole structure, extended model description, specified terminology. Version published in JHEP

We present continuum extrapolated lattice results for the higher order fluctuations of conserved charges in high temperature Quantum Chromodynamics. Through the matching of the grand canonical ensemble on the lattice to the net charge and net baryon distribution realized in heavy ion experiments the temperature and the chemical potential may be estimated at the time of chemical freeze-out, Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, presented at the 31st International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory (Lattice 2013), 29 July - 3 August 2013, Mainz, Germany

We calculate the fermion propagator and the quark-antiquark Green's functions for a complete set of ultralocal fermion bilinears, ${{\cal O}_\Gamma}$ [$\Gamma$: scalar (S), pseudoscalar (P), vector (V), axial (A) and tensor (T)], using perturbation theory up to one-loop and to lowest order in the lattice spacing. We employ the staggered action for fermions and the Symanzik Improved action for gluons. From our calculations we determine the renormalization functions for the quark field and for all ultralocal taste-singlet bilinear operators. The novel aspect of our calculations is that the gluon links which appear both in the fermion action and in the definition of the bilinears have been improved by applying a stout smearing procedure up to two times, iteratively. Compared to most other improved formulations of staggered fermions, the above action, as well as the HISQ action, lead to smaller taste violating effects. The renormalization functions are presented in the RI$'$ scheme; the dependence on all stout parameters, as well as on the coupling constant, the number of colors, the lattice spacing, the gauge fixing parameter and the renormalization scale, is shown explicitly. We apply our results to a nonperturbative study of the magnetic susceptibility of QCD at zero and finite temperature. In particular, we evaluate the "tensor coefficient", $\tau$, which is relevant to the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon., Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, Lattice2013

While electromagnetic and up-down quark mass difference effects on octet baryon masses are very small, they have important consequences. The stability of the hydrogen atom against beta decay is a prominent example. Here we include these effects by adding them to valence quarks in a lattice QCD calculation based on $N_f=2+1$ simulations with 5 lattice spacings down to 0.054 fm, lattice sizes up to 6 fm and average up-down quark masses all the way down to their physical value. This allows us to gain control over all systematic errors, except for the one associated with neglecting electromagnetism in the sea. We compute the octet baryon isomultiplet mass splittings, as well as the individual contributions from electromagnetism and the up-down quark mass difference. Our results for the total splittings are in good agreement with experiment., Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures. Version accepted for publication by Phys. Rev. Lett

We present our results for ratios of higher order fluctuations of electric charge as functions of the temperature. These results are obtained in a system of 2+1 quark flavors at physical quark masses and continuum extrapolated. We compare them to preliminary data on higher order moments of the net electric charge distribution from the STAR collaboration. This allows us to determine the freeze-out temperature and chemical potential from first principles. We also show continuum-extrapolated results for ratios of higher order fluctuations of baryon number. These will allow to test the consistency of the approach, by comparing them to the corresponding experimental data (once they become available) and thus extracting the freeze-out parameters in an independent way., Comment: 5 pages, 7 figures, revtex

We consider the effect of strong external electromagnetic fields on thermodynamic observables in QCD, through lattice simulations with 1+1+1 flavors of staggered quarks at physical quark masses. Continuum extrapolated results are presented for the light quark condensates and for their tensor polarizations, as functions of the temperature and the magnetic field. We find the light condensates to undergo inverse magnetic catalysis in the transition region, in a manner that the transition temperature decreases with growing magnetic field. We also compare the results to other approaches and lattice simulations. Furthermore, we relate the tensor polarization to the spin part of the magnetic susceptibility of the QCD vacuum, and show that this contribution is diamagnetic., Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures, talks presented by FB and GE at Xth Quark Confinement and the Hadron Spectrum, 8-12 October 2012, TUM Campus Garching, Munich, Germany

We establish a new weak coupling limit in F-theory. The new limit may be thought of as the process in which a local model bubbles off from the rest of the Calabi-Yau. The construction comes with a small deformation parameter $t$ such that computations in the local model become exact as $t \to 0$. More generally, we advocate a modular approach where compact Calabi-Yau geometries are obtained by gluing together local pieces (log Calabi-Yau spaces) into a normal crossing variety and smoothing, in analogy with a similar cutting and gluing approach to topological field theories. We further argue for a holographic relation between F-theory on a degenerate Calabi-Yau and a dual theory on its boundary, which fits nicely with the gluing construction., Comment: 59 pp, 2 figs, LaTeX

The response of the QCD vacuum to a constant external (electro)magnetic field is studied through the tensor polarization of the chiral condensate and the magnetic susceptibility at zero and at finite temperature. We determine these quantities using lattice configurations generated with the tree-level Symanzik improved gauge action and N_f=1+1+1 flavors of stout smeared staggered quarks with physical masses. We carry out the renormalization of the observables under study and perform the continuum limit both at T>0 and at T=0, using different lattice spacings. Finite size effects are studied by using various spatial lattice volumes. The magnetic susceptibilities \chi_f reveal a diamagnetic behavior; we obtain at zero temperature \chi_u=-(2.08 +/- 0.08) 1/GeV^2, \chi_d=-(2.02 +/- 0.09) 1/GeV^2 and \chi_s=-(3.4 +/- 1.4) 1/GeV^2 for the up, down and strange quarks, respectively, in the MSBar scheme at a renormalization scale of 2 GeV. We also find the polarization to change smoothly with the temperature in the confinement phase and then to drastically reduce around the transition region., Comment: Version accepted for publication in PRD. 13 pages, 5 figures

We present a comprehensive analysis of the light condensates in QCD with 1+1+1 sea quark flavors (with mass-degenerate light quarks of different electric charges) at zero and nonzero temperatures of up to 190 MeV and external magnetic fields B<1 GeV^2/e. We employ stout smeared staggered fermions with physical quark masses and extrapolate the results to the continuum limit. At low temperatures we confirm the magnetic catalysis scenario predicted by many model calculations, while around the crossover the condensate develops a complex dependence on the external magnetic field, resulting in a decrease of the transition temperature., Comment: slight changes in the text, version accepted for publication in PRD. 5 pages, 5 figures

We use the Wilson flow to define the gauge anisotropy at a given physical scale. We demonstrate the use of the anisotropic flow by performing the tuning of the bare gauge anisotropy in the tree-level Symanzik action for several lattice spacings and target anisotropies. We use this method to tune the anisotropy parameters in full QCD, where we also exploit the diminishing effect of a well chosen smearing on the renormalization of the fermion anisotropy., Comment: 21 pages, 7 figures, 2 tables

QCD thermodynamics is considered using Wilson fermions in the fixed scale approach. The temperature dependence of the renormalized chiral condensate, quark number susceptibility and Polyakov loop is measured at four lattice spacings allowing for a controlled continuum limit. The light quark masses are fixed to heavier than physical values in this first study. Finite volume effects are ensured to be negligible by using approriately large box sizes. The final continuum results are compared with staggered fermion simulations performed in the fixed N_t approach. The same continuum renormalization conditions are used in both approaches and the final results agree perfectly., Comment: 15 pages, 9 figures

We determine the equation of state of QCD for nonzero chemical potentials via a Taylor expansion of the pressure. The results are obtained for N_f=2+1 flavors of quarks with physical masses, on various lattice spacings. We present results for the pressure, interaction measure, energy density, entropy density, and the speed of sound for small chemical potentials. At low temperatures we compare our results with the Hadron Resonance Gas model. We also express our observables along trajectories of constant entropy over particle number. A simple parameterization is given (the Matlab/Octave script parameterization.m, submitted to the arXiv along with the paper), which can be used to reconstruct the observables as functions of T and mu, or as functions of T and S/N., Comment: 14 pages, 15 figures, version accepted for publication in JHEP

We present the equation of state (pressure, trace anomaly, energy density and entropy density) of the SU(3) gauge theory from lattice field theory in an unprecedented precision and temperature range. We control both finite size and cut-off effects. The studied temperature window (0.7...1000 T_c) stretches from the glueball dominated system into the perturbative regime, which allows us to discuss the range of validity of these approaches. We also determine the preferred renormalization scale of the Hard Thermal Loop scheme and we fit the unknown g^6 order perturbative coefficient at extreme high temperatures T>100 T_c. We furthermore quantify the nonperturbative contribution to the trace anomaly using a simple functional form. Our high precision data allows one to have a complete theoretical description of the equation of state from T=0 all the way to the phase transition, through the transition region into the perturbative regime up to the Stefan-Boltzmann limit. We will discuss this description, too., Comment: 17 pages, 11 figures, tabulated results included. Version accepted for publication in JHEP