Related papers: One-loop effective action of QCD at high temperatu…
The heat kernel method is extended to the case of finite temperature. Special emphasis is given to the study of gauge theories. Due to the compactness of space in the Euclidean time direction (inverse temperature) the field strength cannot…
Naively resummed perturbative approximations to the thermodynamic functions of QCD do not converge at phenomenologically relevant temperatures. Here we review recent results of a three-loop hard-thermal-loop perturbation theory calculation…
Classical transport theory for colored particles is reviewed and used to derive the hard thermal loops of QCD. A perturbative study of the non-Abelian transport equations that preserves their gauge symmetry is used to compute the induced…
The chiral phase transition at high temperature is investigated using the effect ive potential in the framework of the QCD-like gauge theory with a variational a pproach. We have a second order phase transition at $T_c=136$MeV. We also…
The thermodynamics of the SU(3) gauge theory has been analyzed with tree level and tadpole improved Symanzik actions. A comparison with the continuum extrapolated results for the standard Wilson action shows that improved actions lead to a…
We derive the hard thermal loop action for soft electromagnetic fields in the finite temperature world-line formulation at imaginary time, by first integrating out the hard fermion modes from the microscopic QED action. Further, using the…
The heat kernel expansion is a very convenient tool for studying one-loop divergences, anomalies and various asymptotics of the effective action. The aim of this report is to collect useful information on the heat kernel coefficients…
We investigate the three-dimensional SU(3) gauge theory at finite temperature in the framework of dimensional reduction. The large scale properties of this theory are expected to be conceptually more complicated than in four dimensions. The…
The successive perturbative estimates of the pressure of QCD at high temperature T show no sign of convergence, unless the coupling constant g is unrealistically small. Exploiting known results of an effective field theory which separates…
The dimensionally reduced action is believed to provide for a theoretically consistent and numerically precise effective description of the thermodynamics of the quark-gluon plasma, once the temperature is above a few hundred MeV. Although…
The method of covariant symbols of Pletnev and Banin is extended to space-times with topology $\R^n\times S^1\times ... \times S^1$. By means of this tool, we obtain explicit formulas for the diagonal matrix elements and the trace of the…
During the first part of this review we will focus on the thermodynamics of $SU(N)$ gauge theories at finite temperature. We will present results from a calculation of electric and magnetic screening masses for the gluons, discuss…
Heat kernel expansions at finite temperature of massless QCD and chiral quark models generate effective actions relevant for both low and high temperature QCD. The key relevance of the Polyakov Loop to maintain the large and…
We discuss recent advances in the calculation of thermodynamic observables using improved actions. In particular, we discuss the calculation of the equation of state of the SU(3) gauge theory, the critical temperature in units of the string…
An effective relativistic kinetic theory has been constructed for an interacting system of quarks, anti-quarks and gluons within a quasi-particle description of hot QCD medium at finite temperature and baryon chemical potential, where the…
Starting from the Phi-derivable approximation scheme at leading-loop order, the thermodynamical potential in a hot scalar theory, as well as in QED and QCD, is expressed in terms of hard thermal loop propagators. This nonperturbative…
Effective-field-theory methods are used to study the high T limit of QCD. These methods unravel the contributions to the free energy of QCD at high temperature from the scales T, gT, and g^2 T. The free energy is explicitly computed to…
We calculate the pressure for pure-glue QCD at high temperature to two-loop order using hard-thermal-loop (HTL) perturbation theory. At this order, all the ultraviolet divergences can be absorbed into renormalizations of the vacuum energy…
Starting with a review of the thermal fluctuations in superconductors, the Gaussian Effective Potential is shown to be a powerful variational tool for the study of the breaking of symmetry in gauge theories. A novel re-derivation of the…
A diagramatic heat kernel expansion technique is presented. The method is especially well suited to the small-derivative expansion of the heat kernel, but it can also be used to reproduce the results obtained by the approach known as…