Analytic structure of rho meson propagator at finite temperature

TL;DR

This paper investigates the rho meson propagator at finite temperature by analyzing one-loop self-energy graphs, identifying medium modifications, and numerically computing the spectral function, highlighting the importance of the pi-omega loop contribution.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the rho meson self-energy structure at finite temperature, including the unitary and Landau cuts, with a novel focus on the pi-omega loop contribution.

Findings

Discontinuities across unitary and Landau cuts identified.

Numerical spectral function constructed and compared with previous results.

Significant contribution from the pi-omega loop's unitary cut highlighted.

Abstract

We analyse the structure of one-loop self-energy graphs for the rho meson in real time formulation of finite temperature field theory. We find the discontinuities of these graphs across the unitary and the Landau cuts. These contributions are identified with different sources of medium modification discussed in the literature. We also calculate numerically the imaginary and the real parts of the self-energies and construct the spectral function of the rho meson, which are compared with an earlier determination. A significant contribution arises from the unitary cut of the pi-omega loop, that was ignored so far in the literature.