Static quark anti-quark pair in SU(2) gauge theory

Abstract

We study singlet and triplet correlation functions of static quark anti-quark pair defined through gauge invariant time-like Wilson loops and Polyakov loop correlators in finite temperature SU(2) gauge theory. We use the Luescher-Weisz multilevel algorithm, which allows to calculate these correlators at very low temperatures. We observe that the naive separation of singlet and triplet states in general does not hold non-perturbatively, however, is recovered in the limit of small separation and the temperature dependence of the corresponding correlators is indeed very different.