Introduction to Thermal Field Theory
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
2015-06-25 v1
Abstract
This is intended to be a very basic introduction and short (and of course incomplete) overview of thermal field theory. In the first part, I introduce the thermal propagator at a very simple level and give the Feynman rules using the time-path contour method. In the second part, I give examples of these rules in scalar theory and discuss the origin of the thermal mass and other important effects as infrared divergences and phase transitions. In the third part, I outline the resummation program of Braaten and Pisarski.
Cite
@article{arxiv.hep-ph/9307277,
title = {Introduction to Thermal Field Theory},
author = {T. Altherr},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-ph/9307277},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
24 pages, 8 figures available upon request as ps files