  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.
