Transient photon production in a QGP

We discuss the shortcomings of a formula that has been used in the literature to compute the number of photons emitted by a hot or dense system during a finite time, and show that the transient effects it predicts for the photon rate are unphysical.Comment: 4 pages, to appear in the proceedings of Hadron Physics - RANP 2004, Angra dos Reis, Brazi

Multiparticle production in the Glasma at NLO and plasma instabilities

We discuss the relation between multi-particle production in the Glasma at next-to-leading order and the physics of plasma instabilities.Comment: 4 pages, talk at Quark Matter 200

An analytic study towards instabilities of the glasma

Strong longitudinal color flux fields will be created in the initial stage of high-energy nuclear collisions. We investigate analytically time evolution of such boost-invariant color fields from Abelian-like initial conditions, and next examine stability of the boost-invariant configurations against rapidity dependent fluctuations. We find that the magnetic background field has an instability induced by the lowest Landau level whose amplitude grows exponentially. For the electric background field there is no apparent instability although pair creations due to the Schwinger mechanism should be involved.Comment: 4p, 3figs; poster contribution to QM200

Remarks on transient photon production in heavy ion collisions

In this note, we discuss the derivation of a formula that has been used in the literature in order to compute the number of photons emitted by a hot or dense system during a finite time. Our derivation is based on a variation of the standard operator-based $S$-matrix approach. The shortcomings of this formula are then emphasized, which leads to a negative conclusion concerning the possibility of using it to predict transient effects for the photon rate.Comment: 13 page

A Bose-Einstein Model of Particle Multiplicity Distributions

A model of particle production is developed based on a parallel with a theory of Bose-Einstein condensation and similarities with other critical phenomena such as critical opalescence. The role of a power law critical exponent tau and Levy index alpha are studied. Various features of this model are developed and compared with other commonly used models of particle production which are shown to differ by having different values for tau, alpha. While void scaling is a feature of this model, hierarchical structure is not a general property of it. The value of the exponent tau=2 is a transition point associated with void and hierarchical scaling features. An exponent gamma is introduced to describe enhanced fluctuations near a critical point. Experimentally determined properties of the void scaling function can be used to determine tau.Comment: Accepted for publication in Nucl. Phys.

Lattice worldline representation of correlators in a background field

We use a discrete worldline representation in order to study the continuum limit of the one-loop expectation value of dimension two and four local operators in a background field. We illustrate this technique in the case of a scalar field coupled to a non-Abelian background gauge field. The first two coefficients of the expansion in powers of the lattice spacing can be expressed as sums over random walks on a d-dimensional cubic lattice. Using combinatorial identities for the distribution of the areas of closed random walks on a lattice, these coefficients can be turned into simple integrals. Our results are valid for an anisotropic lattice, with arbitrary lattice spacings in each direction.Comment: 54 pages, 14 figure

Non-perturbative computation of double inclusive gluon production in the Glasma

The near-side ridge observed in A+A collisions at RHIC has been described as arising from the radial flow of Glasma flux tubes formed at very early times in the collisions. We investigate the viability of this scenario by performing a non-perturbative numerical computation of double inclusive gluon production in the Glasma. Our results support the conjecture that the range of transverse color screening of correlations determining the size of the flux tubes is a semi-hard scale, albeit with non-trivial structure. We discuss our results in the context of ridge correlations in the RHIC heavy ion experiments.Comment: 25 pages, 11 figures, uses JHEP3.cls V2: small clarifications, published in JHE

EMMI Rapid Reaction Task Force on "Thermalization in Non-abelian Plasmas"

Recently, different proposals have been put forward on how thermalization proceeds in heavy-ion collisions in the idealized limit of very large nuclei at sufficiently high energy. Important aspects of the parametric estimates at weak coupling may be tested using well-established classical-statistical lattice simulations of the far-from-equilibrium gluon dynamics. This has to be confronted with strong coupling scenarios in related theories based on gauge-string dualities. Furthermore, closely related questions about far-from-equilibrium dynamics arise in early-universe cosmology and in non-relativistic systems of ultracold atoms. These were central topics of the EMMI Rapid Reaction Task Force meeting held on December 12-14, 2011, at the University of Heidelberg, which we report on.Comment: 13 pages, summary of the EMMI Rapid Reaction Task Force on "Thermalization in Non-abelian Plasmas", December 12-14, 2011, University of Heidelberg, German

Effective potential in the BET formalism

We calculate the one-loop effective potential at finite temperature for a system of massless scalar fields with quartic interaction $\lambda\phi^4$ in the framework of the boundary effective theory (BET) formalism. The calculation relies on the solution of the classical equation of motion for the field, and Gaussian fluctuations around it. Our result is non-perturbative and differs from the standard one-loop effective potential for field values larger than $T/\sqrt{\lambda}$.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure

Semiclassical thermodynamics of scalar fields

We present a systematic semiclassical procedure to compute the partition function for scalar field theories at finite temperature. The central objects in our scheme are the solutions of the classical equations of motion in imaginary time, with spatially independent boundary conditions. Field fluctuations -- both field deviations around these classical solutions, and fluctuations of the boundary value of the fields -- are resummed in a Gaussian approximation. In our final expression for the partition function, this resummation is reduced to solving certain ordinary differential equations. Moreover, we show that it is renormalizable with the usual 1-loop counterterms.Comment: 24 pages, 5 postscript figure