Mesonic "screening masses" in high temperature QCD

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that mesonic screening masses in high-temperature QCD can be quantitatively described by states of 2+1 dimensional quarkonia, linking lattice data to lower-dimensional models.

Contribution

It establishes a quantitative correspondence between lattice screening masses in high-temperature QCD and 2+1 dimensional quarkonia, confirming a 30-year-old hypothesis.

Findings

Screening masses match 2+1D quarkonium predictions

Provides a quantitative description of lattice data

Supports the dimensional reduction picture in high-temperature QCD

Abstract

Lattice studies of QCD at high temperature has investigated the so called ``screening masses", corresponding to quark-antiquark states propagating in $spatial$ (rather than time) direction. Thirty years ago we pointed out that those should correspond to states of 2+1 dimensional quarkonia, and in this work we show that this correspondence provide quantitative description of the lattice data.