Non-Fermi-Liquid Specific Heat of Normal Degenerate Quark Matter

We compute the low-temperature behavior of the specific heat of normal (non-color-superconducting) degenerate quark matter as well as that of an ultradegenerate electron gas. Long-range magnetic interactions lead to non-Fermi-liquid behavior with an anomalous leading $T\ln T^{-1}$ term. Depending on the thermodynamic potential used as starting point, this effect appears as a consequence of the logarithmic singularity in the fermion self-energy at the Fermi surface or directly as a contribution from the only weakly screened quasistatic magnetic gauge bosons. We show that a calculation of Boyanovsky and de Vega claiming the absence of a leading $T\ln T^{-1}$ term missed it by omitting vector boson contributions to the internal energy. Using a formulation which collects all nonanalytic contributions in bosonic ring diagrams, we systematically calculate corrections beyond the well-known leading-log approximation. The higher-order terms of the low-temperature expansion turn out to also involve fractional powers $T^{(3+2n)/3}$ and we explicitly determine their coefficients up to and including order $T^{7/3}$ as well as the subsequent logarithmically enhanced term $T^3 \ln (c/T)$. We derive also a hard-dense-loop resummed expression which contains the infinite series of anomalous terms to leading order in the coupling and which we evaluate numerically. At low temperatures, the resulting deviation of the specific heat from its value in naive perturbation theory is significant in the case of strongly coupled normal quark matter and thus of potential relevance for the cooling rates of (proto-)neutron stars with a quark matter component.Comment: REVTEX, 26 pages, 5 postscript figures. v3: new chapter added which performs a complete hard-dense-loop resummation, covering the infinite series of anomalous terms and extending the range of applicability to all T << m

A nonequilibrium renormalization group approach to turbulent reheating

We use nonequilibrium renormalization group (RG) techniques to analyze the thermalization process in quantum field theory, and by extension reheating after inflation. Even if at a high scale $\Lambda$ the theory is described by a non-dissipative $\lambda\phi^{4}$ theory, the RG running induces nontrivial noise and dissipation. For long wavelength, slowly varying field configurations, the noise and dissipation are white and ohmic, respectively. The theory will then tend to thermalize to an effective temperature given by the fluctuation-dissipation theorem.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures; to appear in J. Phys. A; more detailed account of the calculation of the noise and dissipation kernel

Three-loop HTLpt thermodynamics at finite temperature and chemical potential

In this proceedings we present a state-of-the-art method of calculating thermodynamic potential at finite temperature and finite chemical potential, using Hard Thermal Loop perturbation theory (HTLpt) up to next-to-next-leading-order (NNLO). The resulting thermodynamic potential enables us to evaluate different thermodynamic quantities including pressure and various quark number susceptibilities (QNS). Comparison between our analytic results for those thermodynamic quantities with the available lattice data shows a good agreement.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figures, conference proceedings of XXI DAE-BRNS HEP Symposium, IIT Guwahati, December 2014; to appear in 'Springer Proceedings in Physics Series

The economic and innovation contribution of universities: a regional perspective

Universities and other higher education institutions (HEIs) have come to be regarded as key sources of knowledge utilisable in the pursuit of economic growth. Although there have been numerous studies assessing the economic and innovation impact of HEIs, there has been little systematic analysis of differences in the relative contribution of HEIs across regions. This paper provides an exploration of some of these differences in the context of the UK’s regions. Significant differences are found in the wealth generated by universities according to regional location and type of institution. Universities in more competitive regions are generally more productive than those located in less competitive regions. Also, traditional universities are generally more productive than their newer counterparts, with university productivity positively related to knowledge commercialisation capabilities. Weaker regions tend to be more dependent on their universities for income and innovation, but often these universities under-perform in comparison to counterpart institutions in more competitive regions. It is argued that uncompetitive regions lack the additional knowledge infrastructure, besides universities, that are more commonly a feature of more competitive regions

Advances in perturbative thermal field theory

The progress of the last decade in perturbative quantum field theory at high temperature and density made possible by the use of effective field theories and hard-thermal/dense-loop resummations in ultrarelativistic gauge theories is reviewed. The relevant methods are discussed in field theoretical models from simple scalar theories to non-Abelian gauge theories including gravity. In the simpler models, the aim is to give a pedagogical account of some of the relevant problems and their resolution, while in the more complicated but also more interesting models such as quantum chromodynamics, a summary of the results obtained so far are given together with references to a few most recent developments and open problems.Comment: 84 pages, 18 figues, review article submitted to Reports on Progress in Physics; v2, v3: minor additions and corrections, more reference

Perturbative and Nonperturbative Kolmogorov Turbulence in a Gluon Plasma

In numerical simulations of nonabelian plasma instabilities in the hard-loop approximation, a turbulent spectrum has been observed that is characterized by a phase-space density of particles $n(p)\sim p^{-\nu}$ with exponent $\nu\simeq 2$, which is larger than expected from relativistic $2\leftrightarrow 2$ scatterings. Using the approach of Zakharov, L'vov and Falkovich, we analyse possible Kolmogorov coefficients for relativistic $(m \ge 4)$-particle processes, which give at most $\nu=5/3$ perturbatively for an energy cascade. We discuss nonperturbative scenarios which lead to larger values. As an extreme limit we find the result $\nu=5$ generically in an inherently nonperturbative effective field theory situation, which coincides with results obtained by Berges et al.\ in large-$N$ scalar field theory. If we instead assume that scaling behavior is determined by Schwinger-Dyson resummations such that the different scaling of bare and dressed vertices matters, we find that intermediate values are possible. We present one simple scenario which would single out $\nu=2$.Comment: published versio

The pressure of hot QCD up to g^6 ln(1/g)

The free energy density, or pressure, of QCD has at high temperatures an expansion in the coupling constant g, known so far up to order g^5. We compute here the last contribution which can be determined perturbatively, g^6 ln(1/g), by summing together results for the 4-loop vacuum energy densities of two different three-dimensional effective field theories. We also demonstrate that the inclusion of the new perturbative g^6 ln(1/g) terms, once they are summed together with the so far unknown perturbative and non-perturbative g^6 terms, could potentially extend the applicability of the coupling constant series down to surprisingly low temperatures.Comment: 18 pages. Small clarifications added. To appear in Phys.Rev.

Thermodynamics of Large-N_f QCD at Finite Chemical Potential

We extend the previously obtained results for the thermodynamic potential of hot QCD in the limit of large number of fermions to non-vanishing chemical potential. We give exact results for the thermal pressure in the entire range of temperature and chemical potential for which the presence of a Landau pole is negligible numerically. In addition we compute linear and non-linear quark susceptibilities at zero chemical potential, and the entropy at small temperatures. We compare with the available perturbative results and determine their range of applicability. Our numerical accuracy is sufficiently high to check and verify existing results, including the recent perturbative results by Vuorinen on quark number susceptibilities and the older results by Freedman and McLerran on the pressure at zero temperature and high chemical potential. We also obtain a number of perturbative coefficients at sixth order in the coupling that have not yet been calculated analytically. In the case of both non-zero temperature and non-zero chemical potential, we investigate the range of validity of a scaling behaviour noticed recently in lattice calculations by Fodor, Katz, and Szabo at moderately large chemical potential and find that it breaks down rather abruptly at $\mu_q \gtrsim \pi T$, which points to a presumably generic obstruction for extrapolating data from small to large chemical potential. At sufficiently small temperatures $T \ll \mu_q$, we find dominating non-Fermi-liquid contributions to the interaction part of the entropy, which exhibits strong nonlinearity in the temperature and an excess over the free-theory value.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figures, JHEP style; v2: several updates, rewritten and extended sect. 3.4 covering now "Entropy at small temperatures and non-Fermi-liquid behaviour"; v3: additional remarks at the end of sect. 3.4; v4: minor corrections and additions (version to appear in JHEP

Genetically Determined Plasma Lipid Levels and Risk of Diabetic Retinopathy: A Mendelian Randomization Study.

Results from observational studies examining dyslipidemia as a risk factor for diabetic retinopathy (DR) have been inconsistent. We evaluated the causal relationship between plasma lipids and DR using a Mendelian randomization approach. We pooled genome-wide association studies summary statistics from 18 studies for two DR phenotypes: any DR (N = 2,969 case and 4,096 control subjects) and severe DR (N = 1,277 case and 3,980 control subjects). Previously identified lipid-associated single nucleotide polymorphisms served as instrumental variables. Meta-analysis to combine the Mendelian randomization estimates from different cohorts was conducted. There was no statistically significant change in odds ratios of having any DR or severe DR for any of the lipid fractions in the primary analysis that used single nucleotide polymorphisms that did not have a pleiotropic effect on another lipid fraction. Similarly, there was no significant association in the Caucasian and Chinese subgroup analyses. This study did not show evidence of a causal role of the four lipid fractions on DR. However, the study had limited power to detect odds ratios less than 1.23 per SD in genetically induced increase in plasma lipid levels, thus we cannot exclude that causal relationships with more modest effect sizes exist

Three-loop HTL QCD thermodynamics

The hard-thermal-loop perturbation theory (HTLpt) framework is used to calculate the thermodynamic functions of a quark-gluon plasma to three-loop order. This is the highest order accessible by finite temperature perturbation theory applied to a non-Abelian gauge theory before the high-temperature infrared catastrophe. All ultraviolet divergences are eliminated by renormalization of the vacuum, the HTL mass parameters, and the strong coupling constant. After choosing a prescription for the mass parameters, the three-loop results for the pressure and trace anomaly are found to be in very good agreement with recent lattice data down to $T \sim 2-3\,T_c$, which are temperatures accessible by current and forthcoming heavy-ion collision experiments.Comment: 27 pages, 11 figures; corresponds with published version in JHE