Heavy quark free energies for three quark systems at finite temperature

TL;DR

This paper investigates the free energies of three-quark systems at finite temperature in different color states, revealing how they behave in high temperature deconfined phases and low temperature confined phases, with evidence of Y-shaped flux tubes.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis of three-quark free energies across different color channels at finite temperature, including evidence of flux tube structures.

Findings

In high temperature phase, free energies are described by diquark sums plus self energies.

Evidence of Y-shaped flux tubes in the confining phase of SU(3) pure gauge theory.

String breaking effects reduce flux tube prominence in 2-flavor QCD.

Abstract

We study the free energy of static three quark systems in singlet, octet, decuplet and average color channels in the quenched approximation and in 2-flavor QCD at finite temperature. We show that in the high temperature phase singlet and decuplet free energies of three quark systems are well described by the sum of the free energies of three diquark systems plus self energy contributions of the three quarks. In the confining low temperature phase we find evidence for a Y-shaped flux tube in SU(3) pure gauge theory, which is less evident in 2-flavor QCD due to the onset of string breaking. We also compare the short distance behavior of octet and decuplet free energies to the free energies of single static quarks in the corresponding color representations.