Correlations of chiral condensates and quark number densities with static quark sources

TL;DR

This study explores how chiral condensates and quark number densities correlate with static quark sources at finite temperature, providing insights into screening and string breaking mechanisms in QCD.

Contribution

It presents the first detailed analysis of correlations between Polyakov loops, static meson/diquark systems, and chiral observables in 2+1 flavor QCD at finite temperature.

Findings

Correlation functions reveal screening effects at high temperature.

Quark number density correlates with static sources indicating string breaking.

Results support models of deconfinement and chiral symmetry restoration.

Abstract

We investigate correlation functions of the Polyakov loop and static meson/diquark systems with the chiral condensate and the quark number density at finite temperature. In particular the latter observable can give insight in the mechanism of screening and string breaking at finite temperature. We use for our analysis gauge field configurations generated in 2+1 flavor QCD with an improved staggered fermion action with almost physical light quark masses and a physical value of the strange quark mass on lattices with temporal extent Nt=4 and 6.