English

Thermal 2-loop master spectral function at finite momentum

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2015-06-15 v2

Abstract

When considering NLO corrections to thermal particle production in the "relativistic" regime, in which the invariant mass squared of the produced particle is K^2 ~ (pi T)^2, then the production rate can be expressed as a sum of a few universal "master" spectral functions. Taking the most complicated 2-loop master as an example, a general strategy for obtaining a convergent 2-dimensional integral representation is suggested. The analysis applies both to bosonic and fermionic statistics, and shows that for this master the non-relativistic approximation is only accurate for K^2 > (8 pi T)^2, whereas the zero-momentum approximation works surprisingly well. Once the simpler masters have been similarly resolved, NLO results for quantities such as the right-handed neutrino production rate from a Standard Model plasma or the dilepton production rate from a QCD plasma can be assembled for K^2 ~ (pi T)^2.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1304.0202,
  title  = {Thermal 2-loop master spectral function at finite momentum},
  author = {M. Laine},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1304.0202},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

29 pages. v2: numerics improved; to appear in JHEP

R2 v1 2026-06-21T23:51:08.987Z