Topological fluctuations and susceptibility in SU(3) lattice gauge theory

The topological charge density of the (Monte Carlo generated) SU(3) vacuum is determined. The work involves a range of couplings of 5.6 <=β identical to 6/g2 <= 6.0, and lattice sizes up to 164. The topological susceptibility is found to scale like the string tension (within errors), leading to a value of chisub(t)sup(1/4) = 191 + - 16 MeV, in good agreement with the Witten-Veneziano mass formula. It is also shown how chisub(t) is strongly suppressed as the temperature is increased through the deconfining transition, so that the Usub(A) (1) symmetry is effectively restored in the deconfined phase. The authors carefully monitor finite size effects and perform a variety of calculations -reproducibility; stability under Monte Carlo; distribution of core sizes; etc. - which give one a direct insight into the approach to continuum topology. (author)