Quasi-confinement in theSU(3)-gluon plasma

We investigate a phenomenological equation of state for the gluon plasma, which differs from the ideal gluon gas equation of state in three aspects: (a) it is assumed that gluons withlow momentum are subject to confining interactions anddo not contribute to the energy spectrum of free gluons; (b)only gluons withhigh momentum are considered as an ideal gas with perturbative corrections of orderO(α_s); (c) a non-perturbative vacuum pressure is included. We show that feature (a) allows for a reasonable perturbative treatment of the interaction between gluons with high momentum. The equation of state reproduces lattice data for the thermodynamical functions of theSU(3) pure gauge theory above the deconfinement transition temperatureT _c. This result suggests that a possible way to describe the gluon plasma is in terms of perturbatively interacting gluons and non-perturbative “glueball” states.