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, applied to the original gauge field before fixing to MCG. We find that preconditioning successfully achieves higher gauge fixing maxima. We observe a reduction in the number of identified vortices when preconditioning is used, and also a reduction in the vortex-only string tension. 
Alan \'O Cais, Waseem Kamleh, Kurt Langfeld, Ben Lasscock, Derek   Leinweber, Peter Moran, Andre Sternbeck, Lorenz von Smekal