PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

This letter is devoted to the investigation of the point-point Polyakov loop correlators in SU (2) lattice gauge theory on 4Ns3 lattices with Ns=8, 12, 18 and 26. We use an analytic expression for point-point correlators provided by the transfer matrix formalism to study the temperature dependence of the mass gap [mu]m.g. and the corresponding matrix element [nu] near the critical point in a finite volume. The finite-size scaling analysis of the values [mu]m.g.([beta];Ns) obtained gives the possibility to extract the critical value [beta]c, the critical exponent [nu] and the surface tension [alpha]s.t.