Spectral properties of quarks above T_c in quenched lattice QCD

Abstract

We analyze the quark spectral function above the critical temperature for deconfinement in quenched lattice QCD using clover improved Wilson fermions in Landau gauge. We show that the temporal quark correlator is well reproduced by a two-pole approximation for the spectral function and analyze the bare quark mass dependence of both poles as well as their residues. In the chiral limit we find that the quark spectral function has two collective modes which correspond to the normal and plasmino excitations. At large values of the bare quark mass the spectral function is dominated by a single pole.