Hard parton damping in hot QCD

The gluon and quark collisional widths in hot QCD plasmas are discussed with emphasis on temperatures near Tc, where the coupling is large. Considering the effect on the entropy, which is known from lattice calculations, it is argued that the width of the partons, which in the perturbative limit is given by gamma ~ g^2 ln(1/g) T, should be sizeable at intermediate temperatures but has to be small close to Tc. This behavior implies a substantial reduction of the radiative energy loss of jets near Tc.Comment: invitetd talk given at 'Hot Quarks 04', July 18-24 2004, Taos Valley, NM, US

Collisional Energy Loss of a Fast Muon in a Hot QED Plasma

We calculate the collisional energy loss of a muon of high energy $E$ in a hot QED plasma beyond logarithmic accuracy, i.e., we determine the constant terms of order O(1) in $-dE/dx \propto \ln{E}+ O(1)$. Considering first the $t$-channel contribution to $-dE/dx$, we show that the terms $\sim O(1)$ are sensitive to the full kinematic region for the momentum exchange $q$ in elastic scattering, including large values $q \sim O(E)$. We thus redress a previous calculation by Braaten and Thoma, which assumed $q << E$ and could not find the correct constant (in the large $E$ limit). The relevance of 'very hard' momentum transfers then requires, for consistency, that $s$ and $u$-channel contributions from Compton scattering must be included, bringing a second modification to the Braaten-Thoma result. Most importantly, Compton scattering yields an additional large logarithm in $-dE/dx$. Our results might have implications in the QCD case of parton collisional energy loss in a quark gluon plasma.Comment: 26 pages, 3 figures, JHEP styl

Turning on the Charm

We argue that the strong jet quenching of heavy flavors observed in heavy-ion collisions is to a large extent due to binary scatterings in the quark-gluon plasma. It can be understood from first principles: the charm collision probability beyond logarithmic accuracy and Markov evolution.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Comment on `Pressure of Hot QCD at large N_f'

It is argued why quasiparticle models can be useful to describe the thermodynamics of hot QCD excluding, however, the case of a large number of flavors, for which exact results have been calculated by Moore.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures (version accepted for publication

HTL Resummation of the Thermodynamic Potential

Starting from the Phi-derivable approximation scheme at leading-loop order, the thermodynamical potential in a hot scalar theory, as well as in QED and QCD, is expressed in terms of hard thermal loop propagators. This nonperturbative approach is consistent with the leading-order perturbative results, ultraviolet finite, and, for gauge theories, explicitly gauge-invariant. For hot QCD it is argued that the resummed approximation is applicable in the large-coupling regime, down to almost twice the transition temperature.Comment: minor changes, to appear in PRD, 27 pages, 15 eps figure

Collisional energy loss of a fast heavy quark in a quark-gluon plasma

We discuss the average collisional energy loss dE/dx of a heavy quark crossing a quark-gluon plasma, in the limit of high quark energy E >> M^2/T, where M is the quark mass and T >> M is the plasma temperature. In the fixed coupling approximation, at leading order dE/dx \propto \alpha_s^2, with a coefficient which is logarithmically enhanced. The soft logarithm arising from t-channel scattering off thermal partons is well-known, but a collinear logarithm from u-channel exchange had previously been overlooked. We also determine the constant beyond those leading logarithms. We then generalize our calculation of dE/dx to the case of running coupling. We estimate the remaining theoretical uncertainty of dE/dx, which turns out to be quite large under RHIC conditions. Finally, we point out an approximate relation between dE/dx and the QCD Debye mass, from which we derive an upper bound to dE/dx for all quark energies.Comment: 6 page

Hard gluon damping in hot QCD

The gluon collisional width in hot QCD plasmas is discussed with emphasis on temperatures near $T_c$, where the coupling is large. Considering its effect on the entropy, which is known from lattice calculations, it is argued that the width, which in the perturbative limit is given by $\gamma \sim g^2 \ln(1/g) T$, should be sizeable at intermediate temperatures but has to be small close to $T_c$. Implications of these results for several phenomenologically relevant quantities, such as the energy loss of hard jets, are pointed out.Comment: uses RevTex and graphic

Quark Dispersion Relation and Dilepton Production in the Quark-Gluon Plasma

Under very general assumptions we show that the quark dispersion relation in the quark-gluon plasma is given by two collective branches, of which one has a minimum at a non-vanishing momentum. This general feature of the quark dispersion relation leads to structures (van Hove singularities, gaps) in the low mass dilepton production rate, which might provide a unique signature for the quark-gluon plasma formation in relativistic heavy ion collisions.Comment: 6 pages, Revtex, 2 PostScript figures, revised version to be published in Phys. Rev. Let