Screening at finite temperature and density

Abstract

We present lattice QCD results on heavy quark free energies, extract from its temperature dependence entropy and internal energy contributions, and discuss the onset of medium effects that lead to screening of static quark-antiquark sources in a thermal medium. Most results are obtained in (2+1)-flavour QCD on a line of constant physics with almost realistic quark masses and compared to previous results from 2-flavor QCD as well as pure gauge theory. Furthermore, we discuss results on the density dependence of screening masses that have been obtained using a leading order Taylor expansion in the baryon chemical potential.

10 pages, 15 figures, Presented at Critical Point and Onset of Deconfinement 4th International Workshop, GSI Darmstadt, Germany, July 9-13 2007