Effective potentials for heavy quarks above deconfinement

Abstract

Using methods previously developed by Kelbg and others for creating effective potentials for electron-ion plasmas, we investigate quarkonium potentials above deconfinement. Using results for the internal energy of a static quark-antiquark pair, a set of effective potentials are constructed that take into account quantum effects and symmetry conditions. Bound state effects are explicitly included in order to account for the strongly coupled nature of plasmas. It is hoped that these effective potentials will be useful in simulations of heavy quarks or plasma quasiparticles when the dynamics is treated classically.