Quark antiquark energies and the screening mass in a Quark-Gluon plasma at low and high temperatures

TL;DR

This paper investigates quark-antiquark energies and the screening mass in hot QCD using lattice methods, analyzing their behavior at different temperatures and relating them to the Debye mass and coupling, with implications for understanding screening effects.

Contribution

It provides a non-perturbative lattice analysis of quark-antiquark energies and entropies at large distances in hot QCD, connecting these to the Debye mass and coupling at high temperatures.

Findings

Quark-antiquark energies at large distances relate more to Debye screening than heavy-light meson masses.

Little difference in mass scales between quenched and 2-flavor QCD near the phase transition.

At high temperatures, energies and entropies can be perturbatively related to the Debye mass and coupling.

Abstract

We discuss quark antiquark energies and the screening mass in hot QCD using the non-perturbative lattice approach. For this purpose we analyze properties of quark antiquark energies and entropies at infinitely large separation of the quark antiquark pair at low and high temperatures. In the limit of high temperatures these energies and entropies can be related perturbatively to the temperature dependence of the Debye mass and the coupling. On the one hand our analysis thus suggests that the quark antiquark energies at (infinite) large distances are rather related to the Debye screening mass and the coupling than to the temperature dependence of heavy-light meson masses. On the other hand we find no or only little differences in all mass scales introduced by us when changing from quenched to 2-flavor QCD at temperatures which are only moderately above the phase transition.