Monte Carlo study of SU(2) gauge theory at finite temperature

We find numerical evidence for the phase transition between the confinement phase and free Coulomb phase of SU(2) Yang-Mills theory with lattice cut-off. The search for the critical temperature is based on a Monte Carlo study of the string tension between a heavy Qanti Q-pair in a heat bath. The arbitrary normalization 0.2 GeV2 is used for the string tension at zero temperature when a smooth extrapolation of the lattice theory to the continuum limit is carried out. Our numerical estimate for the critical temperature is Tsub(c) approx. 160 +- 30 MeV in the absence of quark degrees of freedom. It is suggested that the phase transition is of second-order. (orig.)