Heavy quark thermodynamics in full QCD

TL;DR

This paper investigates the behavior of static quark-antiquark pairs in full QCD, focusing on free energy, entropy, and internal energy near the critical region, revealing sharp thermodynamic changes.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the large-distance behavior of quark pairs and identifies entropy contributions, offering new insights into QCD thermodynamics near the phase transition.

Findings

Sharp drop in free energy at the critical region

Peaks in excess entropy and internal energy near the transition

Quantitative analysis of static quark-anti-quark correlations

Abstract

We analyze the large-distance behaviour of static quark-anti-quark pair correlations in QCD. The singlet free energy is calculated and the entropy contribution to it is identified allowing us to calculate the excess internal energy. The free energy has a sharp drop in the critical region, leading to sharp peaks in both excess entropy and internal energy.