Evidence for meson clouds around hadrons in full lattice QCD

Abstract

We investigate chiral symmetry breaking locally around a static quark in the framework of lattice QCD by calculating the correlation of the Polyakov loop with the chiral order parameter. We observe a restoration of chiral symmetry in the vicinity of the color source with a different mechanism in both phases of QCD. In the hadronic phase the chiral condensate is screened by a pion cloud, and the effect is more pronounced for lighter dynamical quarks. Above the deconfinement phase transition we find that the Polyakov loop is surrounded by a cloud of scalar σ-mesons.