Gauge Dependence of the Resummed Thermal Gluon Self Energy

The gauge dependence of the hot gluon self energy is examined in the context of Pisarski's method for resumming hard thermal loops. Braaten and Pisarski have used the Ward identities satisfied by the hard corrections to the n-point functions to argue the gauge fixing independence of the leading order resummed QCD plasma damping rate in covariant and strict Coulomb gauges. We extend their analysis to include all linear gauges that preserve rotational invariance and display explicitly the conditions required for gauge fixing independence. It is shown that in covariant gauges the resummed damping constant is gauge fixing independent only if an infrared regulator is explicitly maintained throughout the calculation.Comment: 29 pages, report BI-TP 92/19, LPTHE-Orsay 92/32, WIN-TH-92/02 (June 1992

Comment on ``Damping of energetic gluons and quarks in high-temperature QCD''

Burgess and Marini have recently pointed out that the leading contribution to the damping rate of energetic gluons and quarks in the QCD plasma, given by $\gamma=c g^2\ln(1/g)T$, can be obtained by simple arguments obviating the need of a fully resummed perturbation theory as developed by Braaten and Pisarski. Their calculation confirmed previous results of Braaten and Pisarski, but contradicted those proposed by Lebedev and Smilga. While agreeing with the general considerations made by Burgess and Marini, I correct their actual calculation of the damping rates, which is based on a wrong expression for the static limit of the resummed gluon propagator. The effect of this, however, turns out to be cancelled fortuitously by another mistake, so as to leave all of their conclusions unchanged. I also verify the gauge independence of the results, which in the corrected calculation arises in a less obvious manner.Comment: 5 page

Hard Thermal Loops, Gauged WZNW Action and the Energy of Hot Quark-Gluon Plasma

The generating functional for hard thermal loops in QCD is rewritten in terms of a gauged WZNW action by introducing an auxiliary field. This shows in a simple way that the contribution of hard thermal loops to the energy of the quark-gluon plasma is positive.Comment: 9 pages, CU-TP 60

Comment on ``High Temperature Fermion Propagator -- Resummation and Gauge Dependence of the Damping Rate''

Baier et al. have reported the damping rate of long-wavelength fermionic excitations in high-temperature QED and QCD to be gauge-fixing-dependent even within the resummation scheme due to Braaten and Pisarski. It is shown that this problem is caused by the singular nature of the on-shell expansion of the fermion self-energy in the infra-red. Its regularization reveals that the alleged gauge dependence pertains to the residue rather than the pole of the fermion propagator, so that in particular the damping constant comes out gauge-independent, as it should.Comment: 5 page

Hard Thermal Loops and the Sphaleron Rate on the Lattice

We measure the sphaleron rate (topological susceptibility) of hot SU(2) gauge theory, using a lattice implementation of the hard thermal loop (HTL) effective action. The HTL degrees of freedom are implemented by an expansion in spherical harmonics and truncation. Our results for the sphaleron rate agree with the parametric prediction of Arnold, Son and Yaffe: Gamma ~ \alpha^5 T^4.Comment: 3 page