Speaker
Description
The predictions of QCD at temperatures ranging from 1 GeV up to 160 GeV have recently become accessible from first-principles, non-perturbative lattice simulations owing to a novel computational strategy. Among the quantities that are being investigated in the ongoing program, hadronic screening masses - i.e. inverse correlation lengths - offer crucial insight into the properties of the QCD medium at extreme temperatures. Physically, they characterise the length scales over which strong interactions are screened in the plasma and the response of the medium when a given hadron is placed in it. On the theory side, these can be computed also as a weak-coupling series in the three-dimensional EFT describing high temperature QCD.
After reviewing the strategy to simulate lattice QCD at temperatures up to 160 GeV, in this talk I will report on recent and ongoing lattice determinations of hadronic screening masses - including for the first time those of non-static mesonic fields - and their comparison with the complementary perturbative computations, highlighting clear signs of significant non-perturbative contributions to these quantities persisting even at such high temperatures.
