The soft fermion dispersion relation at next-to-leading order in hot QED

We study next-to-leading order contributions to the soft static fermion dispersion relation in hot QED. We derive an expression for the complete next-to-leading order contribution to the retarded fermion self-energy. The real and imaginary parts of this expression give the next-to-leading order contributions to the mass and damping rate of the fermionic quasi-particle. Many of the terms that are expected to contribute according to the traditional power counting argument are actually subleading. We explain why the power counting method over estimates the contribution from these terms. For the electron damping rate in QED we obtain: $\gamma_{QED} = \frac{e^2 T}{4\pi}(2.70)$. We check our method by calculating the next-to-leading order contribution to the damping rate for the case of QCD with two flavours and three coulours. Our result agrees with the result obtained previously in the literature. The numerical evaluation of the nlo contribution to the mass is left to a future publication.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figure

The Kohn-Luttinger Effect in Gauge Theories

Kohn and Luttinger showed that a many body system of fermions interacting via short range forces becomes superfluid even if the interaction is repulsive in all partial waves. In gauge theories such as QCD the interaction between fermions is long range and the assumptions of Kohn and Luttinger are not satisfied. We show that in a U(1) gauge theory the Kohn-Luttinger phenomenon does not take place. In QCD attractive channels always exist, but there are cases in which the primary pairing channel leaves some fermions ungapped. As an example we consider the unpaired fermion in the 2SC phase of QCD with two flavors. We show that it acquires a very small gap via a mechanism analogous to the Kohn-Luttinger effect. The gap is too small to be phenomenologically relevant.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure, minor revisions, to appear in PR

Dissipative Hydrodynamics and Heavy Ion Collisions

Recent discussions of RHIC data emphasized the exciting possibility that the matter produced in nucleus-nucleus collisions shows properties of a near-perfect fluid. Here, we aim at delineating the applicability of fluid dynamics, which is needed to quantify the size of corresponding dissipative effects. We start from the equations for dissipative fluid dynamics, which we derive from kinetic theory up to second order (Israel-Stewart theory) in a systematic gradient expansion. In model studies, we then establish that for too early initialization of the hydrodynamic evolution (\tau_0 \lsim 1 fm/c) or for too high transverse momentum (p_T \gsim 1 GeV) in the final state, the expected dissipative corrections are too large for a fluid description to be reliable. Moreover, viscosity-induced modifications of hadronic transverse momentum spectra can be accommodated to a significant degree in an ideal fluid description by modifications of the decoupling stage. We argue that these conclusions, drawn from model studies, can also be expected to arise in significantly more complex, realistic fluid dynamics simulations of heavy ion collisions.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figures, uses revtex4; v2: references added, typos correcte

Mesonic Excitations of QGP: Study with an Effective Model

We study the correlations between quark-antiquark pairs in different quantum number channels in a deconfined plasma by using an effective model of QCD. Using the three flavour PNJL model, the finite temperature spectral functions for different mesonic states are studied at zero and nonzero quark chemical potentials. It is found that in the $\eta$ channel resonance structures survive above the chiral transition temperature \tc, while the kaonic states seem to get washed off just above \tc. The sensitivity of the structures to the anomaly term are carefully investigated.Comment: 15page

The Phase Structure of the Polyakov--Quark-Meson Model

The relation between the deconfinement and chiral phase transition is explored in the framework of an Polyakov-loop-extended two-flavor quark-meson (PQM) model. In this model the Polyakov loop dynamics is represented by a background temporal gauge field which also couples to the quarks. As a novelty an explicit quark chemical potential and N_f-dependence in the Polyakov loop potential is proposed by using renormalization group arguments. The behavior of the Polyakov loop as well as the chiral condensate as function of temperature and quark chemical potential is obtained by minimizing the grand canonical thermodynamic potential of the system. The effect of the Polyakov loop dynamics on the chiral phase diagram and on several thermodynamic bulk quantities is presented.Comment: 13 pages, 12 figures, RevTex4; discussion of mu-dependence extended, references added, version to be published in PR

The omega meson at high temperatures

The decays of the omega meson in a heat bath of thermally excited pions is studied within the framework of real-time thermal field theory using an appropriate effective Lagrangian. We show that the omega meson spectrum broadens considerably at temperatures T > 100 MeV, primarily because of omega pi -> pi pi reactions in the thermal environment.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures; reference and paragraph added; version to appear in Phys. Lett.

Eliminating Infrared Divergences in the Pressure

The pressure of a system in thermal equilibrium is expressed as a mass integral over a sum of thermal propagators. This allows a Dyson resummation and is used to demonstrate that potential infrared divergences are rendered harmless.Comment: 6 pages plain tex, including figures embedded using eps

Effective field theory and dispersion law of the phonons of a non-relativistic superfluid

We study the recently proposed effective field theory for the phonon of an arbitrary non-relativistic superfluid. After computing the one-loop phonon self-energy, we obtain the low temperature T contributions to the phonon dispersion law at low momentum, and see that the real part of those can be parametrized as a thermal correction to the phonon velocity. Because the phonons are the quanta of the sound waves, at low momentum their velocity should agree with the speed of sound. We find that our results match at order T^4ln(T) with those predicted by Andreev and Khalatnikov for the speed of sound, derived from the superfluid hydrodynamical equations and the phonon kinetic theory. We get also higher order corrections of order T^4, which are not reproduced pushing naively the kinetic theory computation. Finally, as an application, we consider the cold Fermi gas in the unitarity limit, and find a universal expression for the low T relative correction to the speed of sound for these systems.Comment: 14 pages, 2 figures. References adde

Debye mass and heavy quark potential in a PNJL quark plasma

We calculate the Debye mass for the screening of the heavy quark potential in a plasma of massless quarks coupled to the temporal gluon background governed by the Polyakov loop potential within the PNJL model in RPA approximation. We give a physical motivation for a recent phenomenological fit of lattice data by applying the calculated Debye mass with its suppression in the confined phase due to the Polyakov-loop to a description of the temperature dependence of the singlet free energy for QCD with a heavy quark pair at infinite separation. We compare the result to lattice data.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure, contribution to Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on "Critical Point and Onset of Deconfinement", to appear in Phys. At. Nucl., vol. 7

Renormalisation of the Nonperturbative Thermal Pressure

We show how the fully resummed thermal pressure is rendered ultraviolet finite by standard zero-temperature renormalisation. The analysis is developed in a 6-dimensional scalar model that mimics QED and has $N$ flavours. The $N\to\infty$ limit of the model can be calculated completely. At a critical temperature, one of the degrees of freedom has vanishing screening mass like the transverse gauge bosons in four-dimensional finite-temperature perturbation theory. The renormalised nonperturbative interaction pressure of this model is evaluated numerically.Comment: 27 pages, plain tex, with 10 figures embedded using eps