Magnetic and electric screening masses from Polyakov-loop correlations

TL;DR

This study investigates the screening properties of the quark-gluon plasma using Polyakov-loop correlations in lattice QCD, revealing temperature-dependent behaviors consistent with weak coupling and effective field theory predictions.

Contribution

It introduces new correlation functions based on symmetry considerations to extract magnetic and electric screening masses in lattice QCD simulations.

Findings

Screening masses follow weak coupling expansion with temperature.

The ratio of electric to magnetic screening masses aligns with effective field theory.

Results are consistent with predictions from supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory.

Abstract

Screening properties of the quark gluon plasma are studied from Polyakov-loop correlation in lattice QCD simulations with two flavors of improved Wilson quarks at temperatures $T/\Tpc \simeq 1$--4 where $\Tpc$ is the pseudocritical temperature. Using the Euclidean-time reflection symmetry and the charge conjugation symmetry, we introduce various types of Polyakov-loop correlation functions and extract screening masses in magnetic and electric sectors. We find that the temperature dependence of the screening masses are well described by the weak coupling expansion. We also find that a ratio of the screening masses in the electric sector to the magnetic sector shows qualitative agreement with a prediction from the dimensionally-reduced effective field theory and the N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory at $1.3 < T/\Tpc < 3$.