Effective potentials for heavy quarks above deconfinement

TL;DR

This paper develops effective potentials for heavy quarks in deconfined quark-gluon plasma using quantum-informed methods, aiming to improve classical simulations of quark dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to construct effective quark potentials above deconfinement by adapting plasma physics techniques and including bound state effects.

Findings

Effective potentials that incorporate quantum effects and symmetry conditions.

Potentially useful for classical simulations of heavy quark dynamics.

Accounts for strong coupling and bound states in deconfined plasma.

Abstract

Using methods previously developed by Kelbg and others for creating effective potentials for electron-ion plasmas, we investigate quarkonium potentials above deconfinement. Using results for the internal energy of a static quark-antiquark pair, a set of effective potentials are constructed that take into account quantum effects and symmetry conditions. Bound state effects are explicitly included in order to account for the strongly coupled nature of plasmas. It is hoped that these effective potentials will be useful in simulations of heavy quarks or plasma quasiparticles when the dynamics is treated classically.