THE INTERQUARK POTENTIAL - A QCD LATTICE ANALYSIS

We report on a QCD analysis of the potential between heavy quarks. Our calculation includes light quark loops and is carried out on a 16(3) x 24 lattice for couplings beta = 5.35 and 5.15 and a quark mass am(q) = 0.010. We generated lattice configurations using a hybrid Monte Car lo algorithm for N(F) = 4 flavors of staggered fermions. We can explor e distances between 0.12 fm and 0.9 fm for these parameters. The shape of the resulting potential is well described by the superposition of a term proportional to 1/R and a linear confinement potential. This fu ll QCD potential is compared to results obtained from quenched approxi mation simulations on lattices of the same size and with the same valu e of the cutoff. We discuss a rough estimate of the QCD coupling.