A lattice test of strong coupling behaviour in QCD at finite temperature

We propose a set of lattice measurements which could test whether the deconfined, quark–gluon plasma, phase of QCD shows strong coupling aspects at temperatures a few times the critical temperature for deconfinement. The measurements refer to twist-two operators which are not protected by symmetries and which in a strong-coupling scenario would develop large, negative, anomalous dimensions, resulting in a strong suppression of the respective lattice expectation values in the continuum limit. Special emphasis is put on the twist-two operator with lowest spin (the spin-2 operator orthogonal to the energy–momentum tensor within the renormalization flow) and on the case of quenched QCD, where this operator is known for arbitrary values of the coupling: this is the quark energy–momentum tensor. The proposed lattice measurements could also test whether the plasma constituents are pointlike (as expected at weak coupling), or not.