Heavy Quark Free Energies and Screening in SU(2) Gauge Theory

TL;DR

This paper investigates the free energy and screening properties of heavy quark pairs in SU(2) gauge theory across different phases using lattice simulations, providing insights into confinement and deconfinement behaviors.

Contribution

It presents lattice Monte Carlo calculations of heavy quark free energies in various channels and analyzes their temperature dependence and screening masses, including a new renormalization method for the Polyakov loop.

Findings

Singlet and triplet free energies match gauge-invariant definitions.

Clear temperature dependence of electric screening mass observed.

Deconfinement transition effects are evident near T_c.

Abstract

We study the properties of the free energy of infinitely heavy quark anti-quark pair in SU(2) gauge theory. By means of lattice Monte Carlo simulations we calculated the free energies in the singlet, triplet and color averaged channels, both in the confinement and in the deconfinement phase. The singlet and triplet free energies are defined in Coulomb gauge which is equivalent to their gauge invariant definitions recently introduced by Philipsen. We analyzed the short and the long distance behavior, making comparisons with the zero temperature case. The temperature dependence of the electric screening mass is carefully investigated. The order of the deconfining transition is manifest in the results near T_c and it allows a reliable test of a recently proposed method to renormalize the Polyakov loop.