Heavy Quark Potentials in Quenched QCD at High Temperature
arXiv:hep-lat/9908010, (August 1999)Phys.Rev. D62 (2000) 034021.DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.62.034021
Abstract
Heavy quark potentials are investigated at high temperatures. The temperature range covered by the analysis extends from \$T\$ values just below the deconfinement temperature up to about \$4 T\_c\$ in the deconfined phase. We simulated the pure gauge sector of QCD on lattices with temporal extents of 4, 6 and 8 with spatial volumes of \$32ˆ3\$. On the smallest lattice a tree level improved action was employed while in the other two cases the standard Wilson action was used. Below \$T\_c\$ we find a temperature dependent logarithmic term contributing to the confinement potential and observe a string tension which decreases with rising temperature but retains a finite value at the deconfinement transition. Above \$T\_c\$ the potential is Debye-screened, however simple perturbative predictions do not apply.