Debye mass and heavy quark potential in a PNJL quark plasma

TL;DR

This paper calculates the Debye mass in a PNJL quark plasma to understand heavy quark potential screening, compares it with lattice data, and explains the temperature dependence of the singlet free energy.

Contribution

It provides a theoretical calculation of the Debye mass within the PNJL model and links it to lattice data and phenomenological fits for heavy quark interactions.

Findings

Debye mass shows suppression in the confined phase due to the Polyakov loop.

Calculated Debye mass aligns with lattice data for heavy quark potential.

Provides a physical basis for phenomenological models of quark screening.

Abstract

We calculate the Debye mass for the screening of the heavy quark potential in a plasma of massless quarks coupled to the temporal gluon background governed by the Polyakov loop potential within the PNJL model in RPA approximation. We give a physical motivation for a recent phenomenological fit of lattice data by applying the calculated Debye mass with its suppression in the confined phase due to the Polyakov-loop to a description of the temperature dependence of the singlet free energy for QCD with a heavy quark pair at infinite separation. We compare the result to lattice data.