Long-distance behavior of $q\bar{q}$ color dependent potentials at finite temperature

TL;DR

This study investigates the behavior of quark-antiquark potentials in different color channels at finite temperature using lattice QCD, revealing that the singlet potential remains attractive and long-range even at high temperatures.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed lattice QCD analysis of color-dependent quark-antiquark potentials at finite temperature, including singlet and octet channels, with minimal gauge dependence.

Findings

Singlet potential remains attractive and long-range at high temperatures.

Octet potential is repulsive and weakens with increasing temperature.

Color average potential also shows attraction, with forces weakening as temperature rises.

Abstract

SU(3) heavy quark potentials at finite temperature are studied with quenched lattice QCD using the stochastic gauge-fixing method. In addition to the standard color average channel, we investigate $q\bar{q}$ potentials in singlet and octet channels. % We obtain clear signals in all cases. The singlet $q\bar{q}$ channel yields an attractive force, while the octet $q\bar{q}$ potential is repulsive; the corresponding color average channel also results in an attractive force. %As the temperature increases, these forces are weakened and As the temperature increases, these forces become weak and their variations are very small; at $T/T_c=1.8-5.6$, % the singlet attractive force is not so weakened even for long distances. the singlet attractive force survives over $R \sim 1/T$. The singlet and octet potentials calculated with this algorithm have a small gauge dependence when the gauge parameter $\alpha$ is changed from 0.6 to 1.3.