The N_f^3 g^6 term in the pressure of hot QCD

TL;DR

This paper calculates a key term in the high-temperature QCD pressure expansion, focusing on the dominant N_f-dependent part, and introduces new computational methods for such calculations.

Contribution

It provides the first independent calculation of the g^6 coefficient term proportional to N_f^3 in the QCD pressure expansion at high temperatures.

Findings

Identifies the dominant N_f^3 term in the pressure expansion.

Develops computational methods applicable to other expansion parts.

Results are significant in the large N_f limit with fixed effective coupling.

Abstract

We determine the first independent part of the g^6 coefficient in the weak coupling expansion of the QCD pressure at high temperatures, the one proportional to the maximal power of the number of quark flavors N_f. In addition to introducing and developing computational methods that can be used in evaluating other parts of the expansion, our calculation provides a result that becomes dominant in the limit of large N_f and a fixed effective coupling g_{eff}^2 = g^2 N_f/2.