Gluon Propagator and Heavy Quark Potential in an Anisotropic QCD Plasma

TL;DR

This paper calculates the gluon propagator in an anisotropic QCD plasma and explores how it affects the heavy quark potential, revealing angular dependence and stronger attraction along the anisotropy direction.

Contribution

It provides explicit expressions for the gluon propagator in various gauges within an anisotropic QCD plasma and analyzes the resulting heavy quark potential.

Findings

Potential shows angular dependence in anisotropic plasma

Stronger attraction along the anisotropy direction

Potential varies with distance scale related to Debye mass

Abstract

The hard-loop resummed propagator in an anisotropic QCD plasma in general linear gauges are computed. We get the explicit expressions of the gluon propagator in covariant gauge, Coulomb gauge and temporal axial gauge. Considering one gluon exchange, the potential between heavy quarks is defined through the Fourier transform of the static propagator. We find that the potential exhibits angular dependence and that there is stronger attraction on distance scales on the order of the inverse Debye mass for quark pairs aligned along the direction of anisotropy than for transverse alignment.