Complex heavy-quark potential and Debye mass in a gluonic medium from lattice QCD

Understand

We improve and extend our study of the complex in-medium heavy quark potential and its Debye mass $m_D$ in a gluonic medium with a finer scan around the deconfinement transition and newly generated ensembles closer to the thermodynamic limit.

• On the lattices with larger physical volume, Re[V] shows signs of screening, i.e.
• a finite $m_D$, only in the deconfined phase, reminiscent of a genuine phase transition.
• Consistently Im[V] exhibits nonzero values also only above $T_C$.