QCD AT COMPLEX COUPLING, LARGE ORDER IN PERTURBATION THEORY AND THE GLUON CONDENSATE

We discuss the relationship between the large order behavior of the perturbative series for the average plaquette in pure gauge theory and singularities in the complex coupling plane. We discuss simple extrapolations of the large order for this series. We point out that when these extrapolated series are subtracted from the Monte Carlo data, one obtains (naive) estimates of the gluon condensate that are significantly larger than values commonly used in the continuum for phenomelogical purpose. We present numerical results concerning the zeros of the partition function in the complex coupling plane (Fisher's zeros). We report recent attempts to solve this problem using the density of states. We show that weak and strong coupling expansions for the density of states agree surprisingly well for values of the action relevant for the crossover regime.