Complex heavy-quark potential and Debye mass in a gluonic medium from lattice QCD

TL;DR

This study uses lattice QCD to analyze the complex heavy-quark potential and Debye mass in a gluonic medium, revealing phase-dependent screening behaviors and addressing finite volume effects near the deconfinement transition.

Contribution

The paper advances the understanding of in-medium heavy-quark potentials by providing refined lattice calculations and addressing previous finite volume artifacts.

Findings

Screening of Re[V] occurs only in the deconfined phase.

Im[V] is nonzero only above the critical temperature T_C.

Finite volume artifacts influence the observed screening behavior.

Abstract

We improve and extend our study of the complex in-medium heavy quark potential and its Debye mass $m_D$ in a gluonic medium with a finer scan around the deconfinement transition and newly generated ensembles closer to the thermodynamic limit. On the lattices with larger physical volume, Re[V] shows signs of screening, i.e. a finite $m_D$, only in the deconfined phase, reminiscent of a genuine phase transition. Consistently Im[V] exhibits nonzero values also only above $T_C$. We compare the behavior of Re[V] with the color singlet free-energies that have been used historically to extract the Debye mass. An effective coupling constant is computed to assess the residual influence of the confining part of the potential at $T>0$. Our previous finding of a gradual screening of Re[V] around $T_C$ on finer lattices is critically reassessed and interpreted to originate from finite volume artifacts that affect the deployed $\beta=7$, $\xi_b=3.5$ parameter set at $N_s=32$.