Analysis of static Wilson line correlators from lattice QCD at finite temperature with T-matrix approach

¹ Cyclotron Institute and Department of Physics and Astronomy, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-3366, USA
² Physics Department, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York 11973, USA

^* e-mail: zhanduotang@tamu.edu
^** e-mail: swagato@bnl.gov
^*** e-mail: petreczk@bnl.gov
^**** e-mail: rapp@comp.tamu.edu

Published online: 26 June 2024

Abstract

The thermodynamic T-matrix approach is used to study Wilson line correlators (WLCs) for a static quark-antiquark pair in the quark-gluon plasma (QGP). Selfconsistent results that incorporate constraints from the QGP equation of state can approximately reproduce WLCs computed in 2+1-flavor lattice-QCD (lQCD), provided the input potential exhibits less screening than in previous studies. Utilizing the updated potential to calculate pertinent heavylight T-matrices we evaluate thermal relaxation rates of heavy quarks in the QGP. We find a more pronounced temperature dependence for low-momentum quarks than in our previous results (with larger screening), which turns into a weaker temperature dependence of the (temperature-scaled) spatial diffusion coefficient, in fair agreement with the most recent lQCD data.