2005/03/31 by Olaf Kaczmarek, Felix Zantow · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #hep-lat #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.71.114510
published as Phys.Rev. D71 (2005) 114510 · 16 pages, 15 encapsulated postscript figures, revtex4
arxiv created 2005/06/17 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01
We analyze heavy quark free energies in 2-flavor QCD at finite temperature and the corresponding heavy quark potential at zero temperature. Static quark anti-quark sources in color singlet, octet and color averaged channels are used to probe thermal modifications of the medium. The temperature dependence of the running coupling, αqq(r,T), is analyzed at short and large distances and is compared to zero temperature as well as quenched calculations. In parts we also compare our results to recent findings in 3-flavor QCD. We find that the characteristic length scale below which the running coupling shows almost no temperature dependence is almost twice as large as the Debye screening radius. Our analysis supports recent findings which suggest that χc and ψ′ are suppressed already at the (pseudo-) critical temperature and thus give a probe for quark gluon plasma production in heavy ion collision experiments, while J/ψ may survive the transition and will dissolve at higher temperatures.