Polyakov loop in 2+1 flavor QCD

Abstract

We study the temperature dependence of the renormalized Polyakov loop in 2+1 flavor QCD for temperatures T<210 MeV. We extend previous calculations by the HotQCD collaboration using the highly improved staggered quark action and perform a continuum extrapolation of the renormalized Polyakov loop. We compare the lattice results with the prediction of non-interacting static-light hadron resonance gas, which describes the temperature dependence of the renormalized Polyakov loop up to T<140 MeV but fails above that temperature. Furthermore, we discuss the temperature dependence of the light and strange quark condensates.

lattice data in the low temperature region are added and the discussion is modified accordingly. This is the published version