Running coupling and screening in the (s)QGP

Abstract

Emphasizing the importance of renormalization in the context of thermal field theory in general, it is pointed out that the Debye mass in the hot quark gluon plasma is determined by the coupling at the scale $m_D$, not $T$ as commonly presumed. The mended result agrees quantitatively with lattice QCD calculations in the strong coupling regime almost down to $T_c$.