English

${\cal N}=4$ supersymmetric Yang-Mills thermodynamics to order $\lambda^2$

High Energy Physics - Theory 2021-11-25 v3 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology Nuclear Theory

Abstract

We calculate the resummed perturbative free energy of N=4{\cal N}=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills in four spacetime dimensions (SYM4,4\text{SYM}_{4,4}) through second order in the 't Hooft coupling λ\lambda at finite temperature and zero chemical potential. Our final result is ultraviolet finite and all infrared divergences generated at three-loop level are canceled by summing over SYM4,4\text{SYM}_{4,4} ring diagrams. Non-analytic terms at O(λ3/2){\cal O}({\lambda}^{3/2}) and O(λ2logλ) {\cal O}({\lambda}^2 \log\lambda ) are generated by dressing the A0A_0 and scalar propagators. The gauge-field Debye mass mDm_D and the scalar thermal mass MM are determined from their corresponding finite-temperature self-energies. Based on this, we obtain the three-loop thermodynamic functions of SYM4,4\text{SYM}_{4,4} to O(λ2){\cal O}(\lambda^2). We compare our final result with prior results obtained in the weak- and strong-coupling limits and construct a generalized Pad\'{e} approximant that interpolates between the weak-coupling result and the large-NcN_c strong-coupling result. Our results suggest that the O(λ2){\cal O}(\lambda^2) weak-coupling result for the scaled entropy density is a quantitatively reliable approximation to the scaled entropy density for 0λ20 \leq \lambda \lesssim 2.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2105.02101,
  title  = {${\cal N}=4$ supersymmetric Yang-Mills thermodynamics to order $\lambda^2$},
  author = {Qianqian Du and Michael Strickland and Ubaid Tantary},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2105.02101},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

28 pages, 8 figures; v3: fix to soft contribution and final result, misc typos fixed, conclusions unchanged

R2 v1 2026-06-24T01:48:19.091Z