Flux-tube structure in finite temperature QCD

TL;DR

This study investigates the chromoelectrical field structure around a static quark-antiquark pair in lattice QCD with physical quark masses across various temperatures, revealing insights into deconfinement and string breaking phenomena.

Contribution

It applies a zero-curl perturbative field subtraction method to analyze the flux-tube structure in finite temperature QCD with dynamical quarks, extending previous zero-temperature studies.

Findings

Identification of deconfinement signals in field structure

Observation of string breaking at finite temperature

Analysis across a wide temperature range

Abstract

We present a study of the structure of the chromoelectrical field created by a static quark-antiquark pair in lattice QCD with 2+1 flavours of dynamical quarks, where the quark masses are set to their physical values. The analysis covers a wide range of temperatures both above and below the chiral crossover, and explores varying quark-antiquark distances, with the aim of identifying signals of deconfinement and string breaking in the field structure. To this end we apply the zero-curl perturbative field subtraction method, developed in our earlier studies of pure gauge SU(3) theory and of full QCD at zero temperature.