On the imaginary parts and infrared divergences of two-loop vector boson self-energies in thermal QCD

Abstract

We calculate the imaginary part of the retarded two-loop self-energy of a static vector boson in a plasma of quarks and gluons of temperature T, using the imaginary time formalism. We recombine various cuts of the self-energy to generate physical processes. We demonstrate how cuts containing loops may be reinterpreted in terms of interference between Order $\alpha$ tree diagrams and the Born term along with spectators from the medium. We apply our results to the rate of dilepton production in the limit of dilepton invariant mass E>>T. We find that all infrared and collinear singularities cancel in the final result obtained in this limit.Comment: references added, typos corrected, slightly abridged, version accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.