Static quark-antiquark interactions in zero and finite temperature QCD: I. Heavy quark free energies, running coupling, and quarkonium binding

We analyze heavy quark free energies in 2-flavor QCD at finite temperature and the corresponding heavy quark potential at zero temperature. Static quark-antiquark sources in color singlet, octet and color averaged channels are used to probe thermal modifications of the medium. The temperature dependence of the running coupling, ${\alpha }_{qq}(r,T)$, is analyzed at short and large distances and is compared to zero temperature as well as quenched calculations. In part, we also compare our results to recent findings in 3-flavor QCD. We find that the characteristic length scale below which the running coupling shows almost no temperature dependence is almost twice as large as the Debye screening radius. Our analysis supports recent findings which suggest that ${\chi }_c$ and ${\psi }^{\prime }$ are suppressed already at the (pseudo) critical temperature and thus give a probe for quark gluon plasma production in heavy ion collision experiments, while $J/\psi$ may survive the transition and will dissolve at higher temperatures.