We calculate spatial correlation functions of in-medium mesons consisting of strange--anti-strange, strange--anti-charm and charm--anti-charm quarks in (2+1)-flavor lattice QCD using the highly improved staggered quark action. A comparative study of
the in-medium modifications of mesons with different flavor contents is performed. We observe significant in-medium modifications for the $phi$ and $D_s$ meson channels already at temperatures around the chiral crossover region. On the other hand, for the $J/psi$ and $eta_c$ meson channels in-medium modifications remain relatively small around the chiral crossover region and become significant only above 1.3 times the chiral crossover temperature.
We determine the time evolution of fluctuations of the Polyakov loop after a quench into the deconfined phase of SU(3) gauge theory from a simple classical relativistic Lagrangian. We compare the structure factors, which indicate spinodal decompositi
on followed by relaxation, to those obtained via Markov Chain Monte Carlo techniques in SU(3) lattice gauge theory. We find that the time when the structure factor peaks diverges like $sim 1/k^2$ in the long-wavelength limit. This is due to formation of competing Z(3) domains for configurations where the Polyakov loop exhibits non-perturbatively large variations in space, which delay thermalization of long wavelength modes. For realistic temperatures, and away from the extreme weak-coupling limit, we find that even modes with $k$ on the order of $T$ experience delayed thermalization. Relaxation times of very long wavelength modes are found to be on the order of the size of the system; thus, the dynamics of competing domains should accompany the hydrodynamic description of the deconfined vacuum.
