English

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

R2 v1 2026-07-22T14:17:58.019Z