3-DIMENSIONAL SU(3) GAUGE-THEORY AND THE SPATIAL STRING TENSION OF THE (3+1)-DIMENSIONAL FINITE-TEMPERATURE SU(3) GAUGE-THEORY

We establish a close relation between the spatial string tension of the (3+1)-dimensional SU(3) gauge theory at finite temperature (sigma(s)) and the string tension of the 3-dimensional SU(3) gauge theory (sigma(3)) which is similar to what has been found previously for SU(2). We obtain root sigma(3) = (0.554+/-0.004)g(3)(2) and root sigma(3) = (0.586+/-0.045)g(2) (T)T, respectively. For temperatures larger than twice the critical temperature results are consistent with a temperature dependent coupling running according to the two-loop beta-function with Lambda(T)=0.118(36)T-c.