Quark Number Susceptibility in Hard Thermal Loop Approximation

We calculate the quark number susceptibility in the deconfined phase of QCD using the hard thermal loop (HTL) approximation for the quark propagator. This improved perturbation theory takes into account important medium effects such as thermal quark masses and Landau damping in the quark-gluon plasma. We explicitly show that the Landau damping part in the quark propagator for spacelike quark momenta does not contribute to the quark number susceptibility due to the quark number conservation. We find that the quark number susceptibility only due to the collective quark modes deviates from that of free one around the critical temperature but approaches free results at infinite temperature limit. The results are in conformity with recent lattice calculations.Comment: 9 pages including four figures and this version is accepted for publication in Euro. Phys. J.

Collisional Energy Loss of Fast Charged Particles in Relativistic Plasmas

Following an argument by Kirzhnits we rederive an exact expression for the energy loss of a fast charged particle in a relativistic plasma using the quantum field theoretical language. We compare this result to perturbative calculations of the collisional energy loss of an energetic electron or muon in an electron-positron plasma and of an energetic parton in the quark-gluon plasma.Comment: 9 pages, LATEX, 2 PostScript figure

Efficient calculation of the Greeks for exponential Lévy processes: an application of measure valued differentiation

Monte Carlo simulation methods have become more and more important in the financial sector in the past years. In this paper, we introduce a new simulation method for the estimation of the derivatives of prices of financial contracts with respect to (w.r.t.) certain distributional parameters called the ‘Greeks’. In particular, we assume that the underlying financial process is a Lévy-type process in discrete time. Our method is based on the Measure-Valued Differentiation (MVD) approach, which allows representation of derivatives as differences of two processes, called the phantoms. We discuss the applicability of MVD for different types of option pay-offs in combination with different types of models of the underlying and provide a framework for the applicability of MVD for path-dependent pay-off functions, as Lookback Options or Asian Options

Gluon Condensate and Non-Perturbative Quark-Photon Vertex

We evaluate the quark-photon vertex non-perturbatively taking into account the gluon condensate at finite temperature. This vertex is related to the previously derived effective quark propagator by a QED like Ward-Takahashi identity. The importance of the effective vertex for the dilepton production rate from a quark-gluon plasma is stressed.Comment: 9 pages including two figure

Low Mass Dilepton Rate from the Deconfined Phase

We discuss low mass dilepton rates ($\le 1$ GeV) from the deconfined phase of QCD using both perturbative and non-perturbative models and compare with those from lattice gauge theory and in-medium hadron gas. Our analysis suggests that the rate at very low invariant mass ($M\le 200$ MeV) using the nonperturbative gluon condensate in a semiempirical way within the Green function dominates over the Born-rate and independent of any uncertainty associated with the choice of the strong coupling in perturbation theory. On the other hand the rate from $\rho-q$ interaction in the deconfined phase is important between 200 MeV $\le M \le 1 GeV as it is almost of same order of the Born-rate as well as in-medium hadron gas rate. Also the higher order perturbative rate, leaving aside its various uncertainties, from HTL approximation becomes reliable at$M\ge 200$MeV and also becomes comparable with the Born-rate and the lattice-rate for$M\ge 500$ MeV, constraining on the broad resonance structures in the dilepton rate at large invariant mass. We also discuss the lattice constraints on the low mass dilepton rate. Furthermore, we discuss a more realistic way to advocate the quark-hadron duality hypothesis based on the dilepton rates from QGP and hadron gas than it is done in the literature.Comment: 24 pages, 9 figures; Discussion added, Accepted in Phys. Rev.

Damping Rate of a Hard Photon in a Relativistic Plasma

The damping rate of a hard photon in a hot relativistic QED and QCD plasma is calculated using the resummation technique by Braaten and Pisarski.Comment: 4 pages, REVTeX, 2 figures (not included), UGI-MT-94-0

Conserved Density Fluctuation and Temporal Correlation Function in HTL Perturbation Theory

Considering recently developed Hard Thermal Loop perturbation theory that takes into account the effect of the variation of the external field through the fluctuations of a conserved quantity we calculate the temporal component of the Euclidian correlation function in the vector channel. The results are found to be in good agreement with the very recent results obtained within the quenched approximation of QCD and small values of the quark mass ($\sim 0.1T$) on improved lattices of size $128^3\times N_\tau$ at ($N_\tau=40, \ T=1.2T_C$), ($N_\tau=48, \ T=1.45T_C$), and ($N_\tau=16, \ T=2.98T_C$), where $N_\tau$ is the temporal extent of the lattice. This suggests that the results from lattice QCD and Hard Thermal Loop perturbation theory are in close proximity for a quantity associated with the conserved density fluctuation.Comment: 16 pages, 4 figures; One para added in introduction, Fig 1 modified; Accepted in Phys. Rev.