148 research outputs found
Resummations in Hot Scalar Electrodynamics
The gauge-boson sector of perturbative scalar electrodynamics is investigated
in detail as a testing ground for resummation methods in hot gauge theories. It
also serves as a simple non-trivial reference system for the non-Abelian gluon
plasma. The complete next-to-leading order contributions to the polarization
tensor are obtained within the resummation scheme of Braaten and Pisarski. The
simpler scheme proposed recently by Arnold and Espinosa is shown to apply to
static quantities only, whereas Braaten-Pisarski resummation turns out to need
modification for collective phenomena close to the light-cone. Finally, a
recently proposed resummation of quasi-particle damping contributions is
assessed critically.Comment: 53 p. LaTeX, 7 figs. (2 in LaTeX, 5 EPS appended as uu-encoded file),
ITP-UH-01/94 & DESY 94-03
Hard-Loop Dynamics of Non-Abelian Plasma Instabilities
Non-Abelian plasma instabilities may be responsible for the fast apparent
quark-gluon thermalization in relativistic heavy-ion collisions if their
exponential growth is not hindered by nonlinearities. We study the real-time
evolution of instabilities in an anisotropic non-Abelian plasma with an SU(2)
gauge group in the hard-loop approximation. We find exponential growth of
non-Abelian plasma instabilities both in the linear and in the strongly
nonlinear regime, with only a brief phase of subexponential behavior in
between.Comment: 4 pages REVTEX4, 3 figures; updated to match version published in
Phys. Rev. Lett. (shorter introduction, added details on quality of numerical
simulation
Equation of state of the hot dense matter in a multi-phase transport model
Within the framework of a multi-phase transport model, we study the equation
of state and pressure anisotropy of the hot dense matter produced in central
relativistic heavy ion collisions. Both are found to depend on the
hadronization scheme and scattering cross sections used in the model.
Furthermore, only partial thermalization is achieved in the produced matter as
a result of its fast expansion
Thermalization vs. Isotropization & Azimuthal Fluctuations
Hydrodynamic description requires a local thermodynamic equilibrium of the
system under study but an approximate hydrodynamic behaviour is already
manifested when a momentum distribution of liquid components is not of
equilibrium form but merely isotropic. While the process of equilibration is
relatively slow, the parton system becomes isotropic rather fast due to the
plasma instabilities. Azimuthal fluctuations observed in relativistic heavy-ion
collisions are argued to distinguish between a fully equilibrated and only
isotropic parton system produced in the collision early stage.Comment: 12 pages, presented at `Correlations and Fluctuations in Relativistic
Nuclear Collisions', MIT, April 05, minor correction
The dynamics of cosmological perturbations in thermal theory
Using a recent thermal-field-theory approach to cosmological perturbations,
the exact solutions that were found for collisionless ultrarelativistic matter
are generalized to include the effects from weak self-interactions in a
model through order . This includes the effects
of a resummation of thermal masses and associated nonlocal gravitational
vertices, thus going far beyond classical kinetic theory. Explicit solutions
for all the scalar, vector, and tensor modes are obtained for a
radiation-dominated Einstein-de Sitter model containing a weakly interacting
scalar plasma with or without the admixture of an independent component of
perfect radiation fluid.Comment: 32 pages, REVTEX, 13 postscript figures included by epsf.st
Comment on ``High Temperature Fermion Propagator -- Resummation and Gauge Dependence of the Damping Rate''
Baier et al. have reported the damping rate of long-wavelength fermionic
excitations in high-temperature QED and QCD to be gauge-fixing-dependent even
within the resummation scheme due to Braaten and Pisarski. It is shown that
this problem is caused by the singular nature of the on-shell expansion of the
fermion self-energy in the infra-red. Its regularization reveals that the
alleged gauge dependence pertains to the residue rather than the pole of the
fermion propagator, so that in particular the damping constant comes out
gauge-independent, as it should.Comment: 5 page
Gauge Invariance of Resummation Schemes: The QCD Partition Function
We pick up a method originally developed by Cheng and Tsai for vacuum
perturbation theory which allows to test the consistency of different sets of
Feynman rules on a purely diagrammatic level, making explicit loop calculations
superfluous. We generalize it to perturbative calculations in thermal field
theory and we show that it can be adapted to check the gauge invariance of
physical quantities calculated in improved perturbation schemes. Specifically,
we extend this diagrammatic technique to a simple resummation scheme in
imaginary time perturbation theory. As an application, we check up to O(g^4) in
general covariant gauge the gauge invariance of the result for the QCD
partition function which was recently obtained in Feynman gauge.Comment: 29 pages, LaTeX, using RevTeX and feynmf.sty, Replacement: NO changes
to the paper, TeX-source now additionally avaibl
Electric fields in plasmas under pulsed currents
Electric fields in a plasma that conducts a high-current pulse are measured
as a function of time and space. The experiment is performed using a coaxial
configuration, in which a current rising to 160 kA in 100 ns is conducted
through a plasma that prefills the region between two coaxial electrodes. The
electric field is determined using laser spectroscopy and line-shape analysis.
Plasma doping allows for 3D spatially resolved measurements. The measured peak
magnitude and propagation velocity of the electric field is found to match
those of the Hall electric field, inferred from the magnetic-field front
propagation measured previously.Comment: 13 pages, 13 figures, submitted to PR
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