English

Four-loop pressure of massless O(N) scalar field theory

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2010-10-27 v1 High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

Inspired by the corresponding problem in QCD, we determine the pressure of massless O(N) scalar field theory up to order g^6 in the weak-coupling expansion, where g^2 denotes the quartic coupling constant. This necessitates the computation of all 4-loop vacuum graphs at a finite temperature: by making use of methods developed by Arnold and Zhai at 3-loop level, we demonstrate that this task is manageable at least if one restricts to computing the logarithmic terms analytically, while handling the ``constant'' 4-loop contributions numerically. We also inspect the numerical convergence of the weak-coupling expansion after the inclusion of the new terms. Finally, we point out that while the present computation introduces strategies that should be helpful for the full 4-loop computation on the QCD-side, it also highlights the need to develop novel computational techniques, in order to be able to complete this formidable task in a systematic fashion.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.hep-ph/0703307,
  title  = {Four-loop pressure of massless O(N) scalar field theory},
  author = {A. Gynther and M. Laine and Y. Schroder and C. Torrero and A. Vuorinen},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-ph/0703307},
  year   = {2010}
}

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34 pages