On temperature dependence of quarkonium correlators

TL;DR

This paper investigates how quarkonium correlators change with temperature in lattice QCD, highlighting the dominant role of zero mode contributions and modeling them with a temperature-dependent heavy quark mass.

Contribution

It demonstrates that zero mode contributions primarily drive temperature dependence and models this effect using a quasi-particle approach with a temperature-dependent heavy quark mass.

Findings

Zero mode contribution dominates temperature dependence.

The zero mode is well described by a quasi-particle model.

An estimate of the medium dependence of heavy quark mass is provided.

Abstract

I discuss the temperature dependence of quarkonium correlators calculated in lattice QCD. I show that the dominant source of the temperature dependence comes from the zero mode contribution, while the the temperature dependence associated with melting of bound states is quite small. I study the zero mode contribution quantitatively for different quark masses and show that it is well described by a quasi-particle model with temperature dependent heavy quark mass. As a byproduct an estimate of the medium dependence of the heavy quark mass is obtained.