  We study Polyakov loop as well as correlators of real and imaginary parts of
the Polyakov loop in 2+1 flavor QCD at finite temperature. We use hypercubic
(HYP) smearing to improve the signal in the lattice calculations and to obtain
reliable results for the correlators at large distances. From the large
distance behavior of the correlators we estimate the chromo-electric screening
length to be (0.38-44)/T. Furthermore, we show that the short distance
distortions due to HYP smearing do not affect the physics of interest
