VACUUM ENERGY DENSITY OF QCD WITH N(F)=3 QUARK FLAVORS - ART. NO. 025016

An equivariant BRST construction is used to define the continuum SU(3) gauge theory on a finite torus. I corroborate previous results using renormalization group techniques by explicitly computing the:measure o n the moduli space of the model with 3 quark flavors to two loops. I f ind that the correction to the maximum of the one-loop effective actio n is indeed of order g(2) in the critical covariant gauge. The leading logarithmic corrections from higher loops are also shown to be suppre ssed by at least one order of g(2). I therefore can relate the expecta tion value kappa(4) =-[Tr <(gamma)over bar>(2)] of the moduli <(gamma) over bar> to the asymptotic scale parameter of the modified minimal su btraction scheme. An immediate consequence is the non-perturbative res ult [Theta(mu mu)] = - (3/8 pi(2)) kappa(4) = - [(3 exp 2)/4(5/3) pi(2 )] Lambda 4/MS = -0.2228...Lambda 4/MS for the expectation value of th e trace of the energy momentum tensor of QCD with three quark flavors. This relation compares favorably with phenomenological estimates of [ Theta(mu mu)] from QCD sum rules for the charmonium system and Lambda (3)/MS from tau decay. [S0556-2821(98)05014-0].