Screenings of the quark-gluon plasma in electric and magnetic sectors are studied on the basis of generalized Polyakov-line correlation functions in lattice QCD simulations with two flavors of improved Wilson quarks. Using the Euclidean-time reflection ($\mathcal{R}$) and the charge conjugation ($\mathcal{C}$), electric and magnetic screening masses are extracted in a gauge-invariant manner. Long distance behavior of the standard Polyakov-line correlation in the quark-gluon plasma is found to be dictated by the magnetic screening. Also, the ratio of the two screening masses agrees with that obtained from the dimensionally-reduced effective field theory and the $\mathcal{N}=4$ supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory.

• Received 9 March 2010

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.81.091501