Heavy Quark Correlators Above Deconfinement

We perform the first study about the heavy-heavy-light quark potential in lattice QCD and a potential model. We find that the inter-two-quark confining force is reduced by valence quark motional effects compared to the string tension.

In the last few years, lattice QCD has made a dramatic progress in understanding the physics of hadrons containing heavy quarks, from the first principle. This review summarises the major achievements.

We discuss the calculations of quarkonium spectral functions in potential models and their implications for the interpretation of the lattice data on quarkonium correlators. In particular, we find that melting of different quarkonium states does not lead to significant change in the Euclidean time correlators. The large change of the quarkonium correlators above deconfinement observed in the scalar and axial-vector channels appears to be due to the zero mode contribution.

Two complementary approaches to the theory of heavy quarkonia are discussed. The nonrelativistic potential models give amazingly accurate predictions, but lack a theoretical justification. The expansion in powers of $v/c$ is theoretically very acceptable, but is not as good in giving numerical predictions. The importance of combining these two approaches is stressed.

Lattice results and Dual QCD results for all heavy quark potentials through order (quark mass)^${-2}$ are exhibited and compared. The agreement on the whole is quite good, confirming the validity of Dual QCD. NOTE: (The only important change in this replaced version is that Figure 6 has been replotted, because the lattice data used in the original was in the wrong units.)

We report on the status of the determination of the heavy quark masses from our calculation of the quarkonia spectra. All sources of systematic errors that enter the quark mass determination are accounted for. We explicitly keep $ma \neq 0$ in the perturbative calculation relating the bare lattice mass to a renormalized mass. Our results are still preliminary.

I review recent progress in studying in-medium modification of inter-quark forces at finite temperature in lattice QCD. Some applications to the problem of quarkonium binding in potential models is also discussed.

Heavy quark potentials are investigated at high temperatures. The temperature range covered by the analysis extends from $T$ values just below the deconfinement temperature up to about $4 T_c$ in the deconfined phase. We simulated the pure gauge sector of QCD on lattices with temporal extents of 4, 6 and 8 with spatial volumes of $32^3$. On the smallest lattice a tree level improved action was employed while in the other two cases the standard Wilson action was used. Below $T...

We present non-perturbative results for the spectrum of heavy quarkonia. Using an anisotropic formulation of Lattice QCD we achieved an unprecedented control over statistical and systematic errors. We also study relativistic corrections to the leading order predictions for heavy hybrids and conventional bound states.

This paper is a review of heavy quarks in lattice gauge theory, focusing on methodology. It includes a status report on some of the calculations that are relevant to heavy-quark spectroscopy and to flavor physics.