Angular intricacies in hot gauge field theories

It is argued that in hot gauge field theories, "Hard Thermal Loops" leading order calculations call for a definite sequence of angular averages and discontinuity (or Imaginary part prescription) operations, and run otherwise into incorrect results. The ten years old collinear singularity problem of hot $QCD$, provides a striking illustration of that fate.Comment: 14 pages, 1 figur

Two-loop Compton and annihilation processes in thermal QCD

We calculate the Compton and annihilation production of a soft static lepton pair in a quark-gluon plasma in the two-loop approximation. We work in the context of the effective perturbative expansion based on the resummation of hard thermal loops. Double counting is avoided by subtracting appropriate counterterms. It is found that the two-loop diagrams give contributions of the same order as the one-loop diagram. Furthermore, these contributions are necessary to obtain agreement with the naive perturbative expansion in the limit of vanishing thermal masses.Comment: Latex, 24 pages, postscript figures included with the package graphic

Proof of a mass singularity free property in high temperature QCD

It is shown that three series of diagrams entering the calculation of some hot $QCD$ process, are mass (or collinear) singularity free, indeed. This generalizes a result which was recently established up to the third non trivial order of (thermal) Perturbation Theory.Comment: 40 pages, 3 figures. to be published in J. Math. Phys. no. 44, 200

Real time thermal propagtors for massive gauge bosons

We derive Feynman rules for gauge theories exhibiting spontaneous symmetry breaking using the real-time formalism of finite temperature field theory. We also derive the thermal propagators where only the physical degrees of freedom are given thermal boundary conditions. We analyse the abelian Higgs model and find that these new propagators simplify the calculation of the thermal contribution to the self energy.Comment: 7 pages, late

Non-Fermi-liquid effect in magnetic susceptibility

Taking into account the anomalous self-energy for quarks due to the dynamic screening effect for the transverse gluon propagator, we study the temperature dependence of the magnetic susceptibility in detail. It is shown that there does not exist the $T\ln T$ term in the susceptibility, different from the specific heat, but an anomalous $T^2\ln T$ term arises instead as a novel non-Fermi-liquid effect.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figur

Finite temperature amplitudes and reaction rates in Thermofield dynamics

We propose a method for calculating the reaction rates and transition amplitudes of generic process taking place in a many body system in equilibrium. The relationship of the scattering and decay amplitudes as calculated in Thermo Field Dynamics the conventional techniques is established. It is shown that in many cases the calculations are relatively easy in TFD.Comment: 32 pages, RevTex, 2 PS figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Two problems in thermal field theory

In this talk, I review recent progress made in two areas of thermal field theory. In particular, I discuss various approaches for the calculation of the quark gluon plasma thermodynamical properties, and the problem of its photon production rate.Comment: 10 pages Latex document, 15 postscript figures. Invited talk given at the 6th Workshop on High Energy Particle Physics, Chennai, India, 3-15 Jan 200

Spontaneous magnetization in QCD and non-Fermi-liquid effects

Magnetic properties of quark matter at finite temperature are discussed by evaluating the magnetic susceptibility. Combining the microscopic calculation of the self-energy for quarks as well as the screening effects for gluons with Fermi-liquid theory in a consistent way, we study the temperature dependence of the magnetic susceptibility. The longitudinal gluons have the static screening given by the Debye mass, and have a standard temperature dependence of $O(T^2)$. An anomalous $T^2\ln T$ term arises in the magnetic susceptibility as a novel non-Fermi-liquid effect due to the anomalous self-energy for quarks given by the dynamic screening for transverse gluons. We then extract the critical(Curie) temperature and present the magnetic phase diagram on the density-temperature plane.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures; Secs. 1 and 5 have been revise