Eur. Phys. J. C (2009) 62: 85-93
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-009-0942-1

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

On the temperature dependence of quarkonium correlators

Physics Department and RIKEN-BNL Research Center, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY, 11973, USA

^* e-mail: petreczk@bnl.gov

Received: 30 September 2008
Revised: 20 January 2009
Published online: 10 March 2009

Abstract

I discuss the temperature dependence of quarkonium correlators calculated in lattice QCD. I show that the dominant source of the temperature dependence comes from the zero-mode contribution, while the temperature dependence associated with the melting of bound states is quite small. I study the zero-mode contribution quantitatively for various quark masses and show that it is well described by a quasi-particle model with temperature-dependent heavy quark mass. As a byproduct, an estimate of the medium dependence of the heavy-quark mass is obtained.