The Wilson Flow and the finite temperature phase transition

We consider the determination of the finite temperature phase transition in the Yang--Mills SU(3) gauge theory. We compute the difference of the spatial and temporal energy density at a physical Wilson flow time. This difference is zero in the confined phase and becomes non zero in the deconfined phase. We locate the phase transition by using a new technique based on an exponential smoothing spline. This method is an alternative to the determination of the phase transition based on the Polyakov loop susceptibility and can also be used with dynamical fermions.