Static quark potential in three flavor QCD - art. no. 034503

We study the effects of dynamical quarks on the static quark potential at d istances shorter than those where string breaking is expected. Quenched cal culations and calculations with three flavors of dynamical quarks are done on sets of lattices with the lattice spacings matched within about one perc ent. The effect of the sea quarks on the shape of the potential is clearly visible. We investigate the consequences of these effects in a very crude m odel, namely solving Schrodinger's equation in the resulting potential.