We report on the first study of the screening properties of the mesonic excitations with strange ($s$) and charm ($c$) quarks, specifically the ground states of the pseudo-scalar and vector meson excitations for the $bar{s}s$, $bar{s}c$ and $bar{c}c$
flavor combinations, using the Highly Improved Staggered Quark action with dynamical physical strange quark and nearly-physical up and down quarks. By comparing with their respective vacuum meson masses and by investigating the influence of the changing temporal boundary conditions of the valence quarks we study the thermal modifications of these mesonic excitations. While the $bar{s}s$ states show significant modifications even below the chiral crossover temperature $T_c$, the modifications of the open-charm and charmonium like states become visible only for temperatures $Tgtrsim T_c$ and $Tgtrsim1.2T_c$, respectively.
Free energies between static quarks and Debye screening masses in the quark-gluon plasma are studied on the basis of Polyakov-line correlations in lattice simulations of 2+1 flavors QCD with the renormalization-group improved gluon action and the $O(
a)$-improved Wilson quark action. We perform simulations at $m_{rm PS}/m_{rm V} = 0.63$ (0.74) for light (strange) flavors with lattice sizes of $32^3 times N_t$ with $N_t=4$--12. We adopt the fixed-scale approach, where temperature can be varied without changing the spatial volume and renormalization factor. We find that, at short distance, the free energies of static quarks in color-singlet channel converge to the static-quark potential evaluated from the Wilson-loop at zero-temperature, in accordance with the expected insensitivity of short distance physics to the temperature. At long distance, the free energies of static quarks approach to twice the single-quark free energies, implying that the interaction between static quarks is fully screened. The screening properties can be well described by the screened Coulomb form with appropriate Casimir factor at high temperature. We also discuss a limitation of the fixed-scale approach at high temperature.
Screenings of the quark-gluon plasma in electric and magnetic sectors are studied on the basis of generalized Polyakov-line correlation functions in lattice QCD simulations with two flavors of improved Wilson quarks. Using the Euclidean-time reflecti
on ($R$) and the charge conjugation ($Ca$), electric and magnetic screening masses are extracted in a gauge invariant manner. Long distance behavior of the standard Polyakov-line correlation in the quark-gluon plasma is found to be dictated by the magnetic screening. Also, ratio of the two screening masses agrees with that obtained from the dimensionally-reduced effective field theory and the ${cal N}=4$ supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory.
The free energy between a static quark and an antiquark is studied by using the color-singlet Polyakov-line correlation at finite temperature. We perform simulations on $32^3 times 12$, 10, 8, 6, 4 lattices in the high temperature phase with the RG-i
mproved gluon action and 2+1 flavors of the clover-improved Wilson quark action. Since the simulations are based on the fixed scale approach that the temperature can be varied without changing the spatial volume and renormalization factor, it is possible to investigate temperature dependence of the heavy-quark free energy without any adjustment of the overall constant. We find that, the heavy-quark free energies at short distance converge to the heavy-quark potential evaluated from the Wilson-loop operator at zero temperature, in accordance with the expected insensitivity of short distance physics to the temperature. At long distance, the heavy-quark free energies approach to twice the single-quark free energies, implying that the interaction between heavy quarks is screened. The Debye screening mass obtained from the long range behavior of the heavy-quark free energy is compared with results of the thermal perturbation theory and those of $N_f=2$ and $N_f=0$ lattice simulations.
We study the equation of state at finite temperature and density in two-flavor QCD with the RG-improved gluon action and the clover-improved Wilson quark action on a $ 16^3 times 4$ lattice. Along the lines of constant physics at $m_{rm PS}/m_{rm V}
= 0.65$ and 0.80, we compute the second and forth derivatives of the grand canonical partition function with respect to the quark chemical potential $mu_q = (mu_u+mu_d)/2$ and the isospin chemical potential $mu_I = (mu_u-mu_d)/2$ at vanishing chemical potentials, and study the behaviors of thermodynamic quantities at finite $mu_q$ using these derivatives for the case $mu_I=0$. In particular, we study density fluctuations at none-zero temperature and density by calculating the quark number and isospin susceptibilities and their derivatives with respect to $mu_q$. To suppress statistical fluctuations, we also examine new techniques applicable at low densities. We find a large enhancement in the fluctuation of quark number when the density increased near the pseudo-critical temperature, suggesting a critical point at finite $mu_q$ terminating the first order transition line between hadronic and quark gluon plasma phases. This result agrees with the previous results using staggered-type quark actions qualitatively. Furthermore, we study heavy-quark free energies and Debye screening masses at finite density by measuring the first and second derivatives of these quantities for various color channels of heavy quark-quark and quark-anti-quark pairs. The results suggest that, to the leading order of $mu_q$, the interaction between two quarks becomes stronger at finite densities, while that between quark and anti-quark becomes weaker.
The free energy between a static quark and an antiquark is studied by using the color-singlet Polyakov-line correlation at finite temperature in lattice QCD with 2+1 flavors of improved Wilson quarks. From the simulations on $32^3 times 12$, 10, 8, 6
, 4 lattices in the high temperature phase, based on the fixed scale approach, we find that, the heavy-quark free energies at short distance converge to the heavy-quark potential evaluated from the Wilson loop at zero temperature, in accordance with the expected insensitivity of short distance physics to the temperature. At long distance, the heavy-quark free energies approach to twice the single-quark free energies, implying that the interaction between heavy quarks is screened. The Debye screening mass obtained from the long range behavior of the free energy is compared with the results of thermal perturbation theory.
Screening properties of the quark gluon plasma are studied from Polyakov-loop correlation in lattice QCD simulations with two flavors of improved Wilson quarks at temperatures $T/Tpc simeq 1$--4 where $Tpc$ is the pseudocritical temperature. Using th
e Euclidean-time reflection symmetry and the charge conjugation symmetry, we introduce various types of Polyakov-loop correlation functions and extract screening masses in magnetic and electric sectors. We find that the temperature dependence of the screening masses are well described by the weak coupling expansion. We also find that a ratio of the screening masses in the electric sector to the magnetic sector shows qualitative agreement with a prediction from the dimensionally-reduced effective field theory and the N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory at $1.3 < T/Tpc < 3$.
