Two mechanisms for the elimination of pinch singularities in out of equilibrium thermal field theories

We analyze ill-defined pinch singularities characteristic of out of equilibrium thermal field theories. We identify two mechanisms that eliminate pinching even at the single self-energy insertion approximation to the propagator: the first is based on the vanishing of phase space at the singular point (threshold effect). It is effective in QED with a massive electron and a massless photon. In massless QCD, this mechanism fails, but the pinches cancel owing to the second mechanism, i.e., owing to the spinor/tensor structure of the single self-energy insertion contribution to the propagator. The constraints imposed on distribution functions are very reasonable.Comment: 24 pages, Latex, no figures, revised version, many minor changes and correction

Correction Factors for Reactions involving Quark-Antiquark Annihilation or Production

In reactions with $q \bar q$ production or $q\bar q$ annihilation, initial- and final-state interactions give rise to large corrections to the lowest-order cross sections. We evaluate the correction factor first for low relative kinetic energies by studying the distortion of the relative wave function. We then follow the procedure of Schwinger to interpolate this result with the well-known perturbative QCD vertex correction factors at high energies, to obtain an explicit semi-empirical correction factor applicable to the whole range of energies. The correction factor predicts an enhancement for $q\bar q$ in color-singlet states and a suppression for color-octet states, the effect increasing as the relative velocity decreases. Consequences on dilepton production in the quark-gluon plasma, the Drell-Yan process, and heavy quark production processes are discussed.Comment: 25 pages (REVTeX), includes 2 uuencoded compressed postscript figure

Heavy resonance production in high energy nuclear collisions

We estimate freezeout conditions for $s$, $c$, and $b$ quarks in high energy nuclear collisions. Freezeout is due either to loss of thermal contact, or to particles ``wandering'' out of the region of hot matter. We then develop a thermal recombination model in which both single-particle (quark and antiquark) and two-particle (quark-antiquark) densities are conserved. Conservation of two-particle densities is necessary because quarks and antiquarks are always produced in coincidence, so that the local two-particle density can be much larger than the product of the single-particle densities. We use the freezeout conditions and recombination model to discuss heavy resonance production at zero baryon density in high energy nuclear collisions.Comment: revtex, 15 pages, no figures, KSUCNR-009-9

QCD Working Group Report

This is the report of the QCD working group at WHEPP 6. Discussions and work on heavy ion collisions, polarised scattering, and collider phenomenology are reported.Comment: Report of the QCD group at WHEPP-6, Chennai, January 2000. 7 page

Constraints on radiative decay of the 17-keV neutrino from COBE Measurements

It is shown that, for a nontrivial radiative decay channel of the 17-keV neutrino, the photons would distort the microwave background radiation through ionization of the universe. The constraint on the branching ratio of such decays from COBE measurements is found to be more stringent than that from other considerations. The limit on the branching ratio in terms of the Compton $y$ parameter is $B_\gamma < 1.5 \times 10^{-7} ({\tau_\nu \over 10^{11} sec})^{0.45} ({y \over 10^{-3}})^{1.11} h^{-1}$ for an $\Omega=1, \Omega_b=0.1$ universe.Comment: 7 pages. (figures will be sent on request) (To appear in Phys. Rev. D.

Thermal Dileptons from pi - rho Interactions in a Hot Pion Gas

A systematic study of low mass dilepton production from $\pi-\rho$ interactions in a hot medium is presented. Applying finite temperature perturbation theory the dilepton rate, respectively the virtual photon rate, is computed up to order $g_\rho^2$. For dilepton masses below the $\rho$ the two-body reactions $\pi\pi\to \rho \gamma^*$, $\pi\rho\to \pi \gamma^*$, and the decay process $\rho \to \pi \pi \gamma^*$ give significant contributions. Non-equilibrium contributions to the thermal rate are estimated, including the modification of the particle distribution function with non-zero pion chemical potential. The comparison of the dilepton rate with the recent data measured in nucleus-nucleus collisions at SPS energy by the CERES Collaboration is also performed. It is shown that the additional thermal dileptons from $\pi-\rho$ interactions can partially account for the access of the soft dilepton yield seen experimentally.Comment: 21 pages LaTeX, 8 figs with epsfig.sty macro include

Time evolution in linear response: Boltzmann equations and beyond

In this work a perturbative linear response analysis is performed for the time evolution of the quasi-conserved charge of a scalar field. One can find two regimes, one follows exponential damping, where the damping rate is shown to come from quantum Boltzmann equations. The other regime (coming from multiparticle cuts and products of them) decays as power law. The most important, non-oscillating contribution in our model comes from a 4-particle intermediate state and decays as 1/t^3. These results may have relevance for instance in the context of lepton number violation in the Early Universe.Comment: 19 page

Calculating Dilepton Rates from Monte Carlo Simulations of Parton Production

To calculate dilepton rates in a Monte Carlo simulation of ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions, one usually scales the number of similar QCD processes by a ratio of the corresponding differential probabilities. We derive the formula for such a ratio especially for dilepton bremsstrahlung processes. We also discuss the non-triviality of including higher order corrections to direct Drell-Yan process. The resultant mass spectra from our Monte Carlo simulation are consistent with the semi-analytical calculation using dilepton fragmentation functions.Comment: 14 pages in RevTex, 3 figures in uuencoded files, LBL-3466

Effective theories for real-time correlations in hot plasmas

We discuss the sequence of effective theories needed to understand the qualitative, and quantitative, behavior of real-time correlators in ultra-relativistic plasmas. We analyze in detail the case where A is a gauge-invariant conserved current. This case is of interest because it includes a correlation recently measured in lattice simulations of classical, hot, SU(2)-Higgs gauge theory. We find that simple perturbation theory, free kinetic theory, linearized kinetic theory, and hydrodynamics are all needed to understand the correlation for different ranges of time. We emphasize how correlations generically have power-law decays at very large times due to non-linear couplings to long-lived hydrodynamic modes.Comment: 28 pages, Latex, uses revtex, epsf macro packages [Revised version: t -> sqrt{t} in a few typos on p. 10.

Thermal Background Corrections to the Neutrino Electromagnetic Vertex in Models with Charged Scalar Bosons

We calculate the correction to the neutrino electromagnetic vertex due to background of electrons in a large class of models, as the supersymmetric model with explicit breaking of R-parity, where charged scalar bosons couple to leptons and which are able to provide an astrophysically interesting value for the neutrino magnetic (electric) moment, $\mu_\nu\sim 10^{-12}\:\mu_B$. We show that the medium contribution to the chirality flipping magnetic (electric) dipole moment is not significant, however a new chirality flipping, but helicity conserving, term arises. It signals the presence of ${\cal CP}$ and ${\cal CPT}$ asymmetries in the medium and is associated to the longitudinal photon and therefore disappears in the vacuum. We estimate the contribution of this new term to the rate of the plasmon decay process $\gamma_{pl}\rightarrow \nu\nu$ in the core of degenerate stars, showing that it can be comparable with the contribution coming from the vacuum magnetic (dipole) moment. We also calculate the correction to the effective potential of a propagating neutrino in presence of a magnetic field due to a chirality preserving contribution to the diagonal magnetic moment from the medium. This contribution is identical for particles and antiparticles and so need not to vanish for Majorana neutrinos.Comment: DFPD 93/TH/75, SISSA 93/183/A preprint, 25 pages + 4 figures available by e-mail reques