Preconditioning maximal center gauge with stout link smearing in SU(3)

Center vortices are studied in SU(3) gauge theory using maximal center gauge (MCG) fixing. Stout link smearing and over-improved stout link smearing are used to construct a preconditioning gauge-field transformation which is applied to the original gauge field before fixing to MCG. We find that preconditioning successfully achieves higher maxima of the gauge functional used in MCG. We observe a reduction in the number of identified vortices when this preconditioning method is used, and also a reduction in the string tension as measured on the identified vortex matter.