Charged-Particle Decay at Finite Temperature

Radiative corrections to the decay rate of charged fermions caused by the presence of a thermal bath of photons are calculated in the limit when temperatures are below the masses of all charged particles involved. The cancellation of finite-temperature infrared divergences in the decay rate is described in detail. Temperature-dependent radiative corrections to a two-body decay of a hypothetical charged fermion and to electroweak decays of a muon are given. We touch upon possible implications of these results for charged particles in the early Universe.Comment: 18 pages, 6 figures. v2: typos corrected, bibliography revised, content matches published versio

Fermionic dispersion relations in ultradegenerate relativistic plasmas beyond leading logarithmic order

We determine the dispersion relations of fermionic quasiparticles in ultradegenerate plasmas by a complete evaluation of the on-shell hard-dense-loop-resummed one-loop fermion self energy for momenta of the order of the Fermi momentum and above. In the case of zero temperature, we calculate the nonanalytic terms in the vicinity of the Fermi surface beyond the known logarithmic approximation, which turn out to involve fractional higher powers in the energy variable. For nonzero temperature (but much smaller than the chemical potential), we obtain the analogous expansion in closed form, which is then analytic but involves polylogarithms. These expansions are compared with a full numerical evaluation of the resulting group velocities and damping coefficients.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures, REVTeX4, v2: minor improvement

Weinberg power counting and the quark determinant at small chemical potential

We construct an effective action for QCD by expanding the quark determinant in powers of the chemical potential at finite temperature in the case of massless quarks. To cut the infinite series we adopt the Weinberg power counting criteria. We compute the minimal effective action (~p^4), expanding in the external momentum, which implies the use of the hard thermal loop approximation. Our main result is a gauge invariant expression for the phase theta of the functional determinant in QCD, and recovers dimensional reduction in the high-temperature limit. We compute, analytically, in the range of p << 2 pi T, including perturbative and nonperturbative contributions, the latter treated within the mean field approximation. Implications for lattice simulations are briefly discussed.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures. v2: title changed, expanded discussion and added example (calculation of at high temperature). Published in PR

Collective Excitations of Supersymmetric Plasma

Collective excitations of N = 1 supersymmetric electromagnetic plasma are studied. Since the Keldysh-Schwinger approach is used, not only equilibrium but also non-equilibrium plasma, which is assumed to be ultrarelativistic, is under consideration. The dispersion equations of photon, photino, electron and selectron modes are written down and the self-energies, which enter the equations, are computed in the Hard Loop Approximation. The self-energies are discussed in the context of effective action which is also given. The photon modes and electron ones appear to be the same as in the usual ultrarelativistic plasma of electrons, positrons and photons. The photino modes coincide with the electron ones and the selectron modes are as of free relativistic massive particle.Comment: 14 pages, typos corrected, Phys. Rev. D in prin

Next-to-leading order static gluon self-energy for anisotropic plasmas

In this paper the structure of the next-to-leading (NLO) static gluon self energy for an anisotropic plasma is investigated in the limit of a small momentum space anisotropy. Using the Ward identities for the static hard-loop (HL) gluon polarization tensor and the (nontrivial) static HL vertices, we derive a comparatively compact form for the complete NLO correction to the structure function containing the space-like pole associated with magnetic instabilities. On the basis of a calculation without HL vertices, it has been conjectured that the imaginary part of this structure function is nonzero, rendering the space-like poles integrable. We show that there are both positive and negative contributions when HL vertices are included, highlighting the necessity of a complete numerical evaluation, for which the present work provides the basis.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figure

A relativistic non-relativistic Goldstone theorem: gapped Goldstones at finite charge density

We adapt the Goldstone theorem to study spontaneous symmetry breaking in relativistic theo- ries at finite charge density. It is customary to treat systems at finite density via non-relativistic Hamiltonians. Here we highlight the importance of the underlying relativistic dynamics. This leads to seemingly new results whenever the charge in question is spontaneously broken and does not commute with other broken charges. We find that that the latter interpolate gapped excitations. In contrast, all existing versions of the Goldstone theorem predict the existence of gapless modes. We derive exact non-perturbative expressions for their gaps, in terms of the chemical potential and of the symmetry algebra.Comment: 5 pages. v2: minor modifications, matches the PRL versio

Non-relativistic bound states at finite temperature (II): the muonic hydrogen

We illustrate how to apply modern effective field theory techniques and dimensional regularization to factorise the various scales which appear in QED bound states at finite temperature. We focus here on the muonic hydrogen atom. Vacuum polarization effects make the physics of this atom at finite temperature very close to that of heavy quarkonium states. We comment on the implications of our results for these states in the quark gluon plasma. In particular, we estimate the effects of a finite charm quark mass in the dissociation temperature of bottomonium.Comment: 22 pages, 8 figures. Journal version, reference adde

Gamma flashes from relativistic electron-positron plasma droplets

Ultra-intense lasers are expected to produce, in near future, relativistic electron-positron plasma droplets. Considering the local photon production rate in complete leading order in quantum electrodynamics (QED), we point out that these droplets are interesting sources of gamma ray flashesComment: 4 pages, 6 figures; Text has been revised and new refs. are adde

Momentum Broadening of a Fast Parton in a Perturbative Quark-Gluon Plasma

The average transverse momentum transfer per unit path length to a fast parton scattering elastically in a perturbative quark-gluon plasma is related to the radiative energy loss of the parton. We first calculate the momentum transfer coefficient $\hat q$ in terms of a classical Langevin problem and then define it quantum-mechanically through scattering matrix element. After treating the well known case of a quark-gluon plasma in equilibrium we consider an off-equilibrium unstable plasma. As a specific example, we treat the two-stream plasma with unstable modes of longitudinal chromoelectric field. In the presence of the instabilities, $\hat q$ is shown to exponentially grow in time.Comment: Updated version containing an analysis of insufficiencies in previous calculations of momentum broadening in unstable plasma