Thermal imaginary part of a real-time static potential from classical lattice gauge theory simulations

Abstract

Recently, a finite-temperature real-time static potential has been introduced via a Schrödinger-type equation satisfied by a certain heavy quarkonium Green's function. Furthermore, it has been pointed out that it possesses an imaginary part, which induces a finite width for the tip of the quarkonium peak in the thermal dilepton production rate. The imaginary part originates from Landau-damping of low-frequency gauge fields, which are essentially classical due to their high occupation number. Here we show how the imaginary part can be measured with classical lattice gauge theory simulations, accounting non-perturbatively for the infrared sector of finite-temperature field theory. We demonstrate that a non-vanishing imaginary part indeed exists non-perturbatively; and that its value agrees semi-quantitatively with that predicted by Hard Loop resummed perturbation theory.