  We explore the interactions between a quark anti-quark pair in a thermal
medium based on lattice QCD ensembles with $N_f = 2+1$ dynamical HISQ flavors.
Our dataset spans the phenomenologically relevant temperature range between
T=140MeV-2GeV based on lattice sizes $N_\tau=10,12$ and $16$, with an aspect
ratio of $N_\sigma/N_\tau=4$. The peak position $\Omega$ and the width $\Gamma$
of the spectral function of Wilson-line correlators in Coulomb gauge is
computed. We assess the information content in the correlation functions and
deploy three complementary strategies to reconstruct spectral information:
model fits, Pad\'e approximation and the Bayesian BR method. Limitations of
each approach are carefully assessed.
