Vacuum polarization at long distances and the heavy-quark-antiquark potential

Vacuum polarization at long distances for confined heavy-quark-antiquark (QQ-bar) pairs is considered. The vacuum-polarization-corrected static potential is shown to have a radial dependence which should allow interpolation between charmonium, upsilon states, and other heavy QQ-bar systems. It is argued that the static, confining potential cannot grow faster than a linear potential at large distances, within the framework of this analysis