We have investigated QCD with two flavors of degenerate fermions using the Symanzik-improvement program for both the gauge and fermion actions. Our study focuses on the deconfinement transition on an $N_t=4\mathrm{}$ lattice. Having located the thermal transition, we performed zero temperature simulations nearby in order to compute hadronic masses and the static quark potential. We find that this action reduces lattice artifacts present in thermodynamics with the standard Wilson (gauge and fermion) actions. However, comparisons between improved Wilson and Kogut-Susskind actions show some disagreement.

• Received 7 March 1997

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.56.5584