Profiles of a broken string in two-flavor QCD below and above the finite temperature transition

Abstract

We study the Abelian flux tube profile of the mesonic and baryonic configurations formed by static quarks below and above the finite-temperature transition in Nf = 2 lattice QCD. To reduce the effects of ultra-violet fluctuations, we measure Abelian distributions of the action density, the color-electric field and the monopole current in the maximally Abelian projection. For fixed temperature, T (with T/Tc < 1), we observe a clear signal of the string breaking for a large test quark separation R. The electric field becomes Coulomb-like and the circulating monopole current disappears. We also study the temperature dependence of the flux profile for fixed R ≈ 0.7 fm. The squeezed flux disappears above Tc.