In-medium static quark potential from spectral functions on realistic HISQ ensembles

Abstract

We explore the interactions between a quark anti-quark pair in a thermal medium based on lattice QCD ensembles with $N_f=2+1$ dynamical HISQ flavors. Our dataset spans the phenomenologically relevant temperature range between T=140MeV-2GeV based on lattice sizes $N_{\tau }=10,12$ and $16$, with an aspect ratio of $N_{\sigma }/N_{\tau }=4$. The peak position $\Omega$ and the width $\Gamma$ of the spectral function of Wilson-line correlators in Coulomb gauge is computed. We assess the information content in the correlation functions and deploy three complementary strategies to reconstruct spectral information: model fits, Padé approximation and the Bayesian BR method. Limitations of each approach are carefully assessed.

Comments: Contribution to The 38th International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory, LATTICE2021 26th-30th July, 2021 Zoom/Gather@Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 9 pages, 7 figure, LaTeX, uses PoS class