On the Thermodynamics of a Heavy Quark-Antiquark Pair

Thermodynamics of a heavy quark-antiquark pair in SU(3)-QCD is studied below the deconfinement critical temperature, \(T_c\). In the quenched case, a model of the string passing through heavy valence gluons yields a correct estimate of \(T_c\) and a behavior of the string tension near \(T_c\). For two light flavors, entropy and internal energy can be obtained from the partition function of heavy-light mesons and baryons. They are in a good qualitative agreement with the lattice results.