Chromoelectric and chromomagnetic correlators at high temperature from gradient flow

TL;DR

This study computes chromoelectric and chromomagnetic correlators at high temperatures in SU(3) gauge theory using lattice simulations with gradient flow, revealing distinct flow time behaviors likely due to anomalous dimensions.

Contribution

It provides the first lattice calculation of these correlators at very high temperature and analyzes their flow time dependence with multiple lattice spacings.

Findings

Chromomagnetic correlator shows different flow time dependence than chromoelectric correlator.

Flow time dependence suggests the influence of anomalous dimensions.

Results help in understanding heavy quark diffusion in quark-gluon plasma.

Abstract

The heavy quark diffusion coefficient is encoded in the spectral functions of the chromoelectric and the chromomagnetic correlators that are calculable on the lattice. We study the chromoelectric and the chromomagnetic correlator in the deconfined phase of SU(3) gauge theory using Symanzik flow at two temperatures $1.5T_c$ and $10000 T_c$, with $T_c$ being the phase transition temperature. To control the lattice discretization errors and perform the continuum limit we use several temporal lattice extents $N_t=16,20,24$ and 28. We observe that the flow time dependence of the chromomagnetic correlator is quite different from chromoelectric correlator most likely due to the anomalous dimension of the former as has been pointed out recently in the literature.