Heavy Quark Anti-Quark Free Energy and the Renormalized Polyakov Loop

TL;DR

This paper calculates the free energies of static quark-antiquark pairs in a thermal gluonic environment, introduces a renormalization method based on zero-temperature potentials, and defines a well-behaved Polyakov loop as an order parameter for deconfinement in SU(3).

Contribution

It presents a new renormalization approach for free energies and establishes the renormalized Polyakov loop as a reliable order parameter in continuum limit.

Findings

Renormalized free energies are computed for static quark pairs.

The renormalized Polyakov loop is defined and shown to be well-behaved.

The approach clarifies the deconfinement transition in SU(3) gauge theory.

Abstract

We calculate the colour averaged and colour singlet free energies of static quark anti-quark sources placed in a thermal gluonic heat bath. We discuss the renormalization of these free energies using the short distance properties of the zero temperature heavy quark potential. This leads to the definition of the renormalized Polyakov loop as an order parameter for the deconfinement phase transition of the SU(3) gauge theory which is well behaved in the continuum limit.