Color screening in $2+1$ flavor QCD at large distances

Abstract

We study correlation functions of spatially separated static quark-antiquark pairs in $2+1$ flavor QCD in order to investigate the nature of color screening at high temperatures. We perform lattice calculations in a wide temperature range, $116~\text{MeV} \leq T \leq 5814~\text{MeV}$, using the highly improved staggered quark (HISQ) action and several lattice spacings to control discretization effects. We alleviate the UV noise problem through the use of four dimensional hypercubic (HYP) smearing, which enables the reconstruction of correlators and determination of screening properties even at low temperatures and at large distances.