Massive quasiparticle model of the SU(3) gluon plasma

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Abstract
Recent SU(3) gauge field lattice data for the equation of state are interpreted by a quasiparticle model with effective thermal gluon masses. The model is motivated by lowest-order perturbative QCD and describes very well the data. The proposed quasiparticle approach can be applied to study color excitations in the nonperturbative regime. As an example we estimate the temperature dependence of the Debye screening mass and find that it declines sharply when approaching the confinement temperature from above, while the thermal mass continuously rises.