Heavy quark free energies and the renormalized Polyakov loop in full QCD

TL;DR

This paper investigates the temperature-dependent free energies of heavy quark pairs in full QCD, comparing them to quenched QCD, and introduces a non-perturbative renormalization of the Polyakov loop for continuum limit consistency.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of heavy quark free energies in full QCD and proposes a non-perturbative renormalization method for the Polyakov loop.

Findings

Free energies depend on temperature and color channels.

The renormalized Polyakov loop is well-defined in the continuum limit.

Differences between full and quenched QCD are discussed.

Abstract

We study the renormalized free energy of a heavy quark anti-quark pair in the different colour channels in full QCD at finite temperature. Similarities and differences to the quenched case are discussed and the temperature dependence as well as their short distance behavior are analyzed. The asymptotic large distance behavior of the free energy is used to define the non-perturbatively renormalized Polyakov loop which is well behaved in the continuum limit.