Thermodynamics of large-N super Yang-Mills theory AdS/CFT correspondence

The thermodynamics of d = 4, N = 4 supersymmetric SU(N) Yang-Mills theory i s studied with particular attention paid to the perturbative expansion in t he weak 't Hooft coupling regime and to the interpolation to the strong cou pling regime thereof. The non-ideal gas effect to the free energy is calcul ated and found that leading- and next-to-leading-order corrections contribu te with relative opposite signs. The Pade approximant method is adopted to improve fixed-order perturbative series and is found to decrease the free e nergy monotonically as the 't Hooft coupling parameter is increased. This m ay be regarded as an indication of a smooth interpolation of the thermodyna mics between the weak and strong 't Hooft coupling regimes, as suggested by Maldacena's AdS/CFT correspondence. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rig hts reserved.