Hadronic screening with improved taste symmetry

We present our results on meson and nucleon screening masses in finite temperature two flavor QCD using smeared staggered valence quarks and staggered thin-link sea quarks with different lattice spacings and quark masses. We investigate optimization of smearing by observing its effects on the IR and UV components of gluon and quark fields. The application of smearing to screening at finite temperature also provides a transparent window into the mechanism of the interplay of smearing and chiral symmetry. The improved hadronic operators show that for temperature T >= 1.5T(c) (T-c is the finite temperature cross over), screening masses are consistent with weak-coupling predictions. There is also evidence for a rapid opening up of a spectral gap of the Dirac operator immediately above T-c.