Non-relativistic bound states at finite temperature (II): the muonic hydrogen

TL;DR

This paper applies effective field theory and dimensional regularization to study muonic hydrogen at finite temperature, revealing similarities with heavy quarkonium physics and implications for quark-gluon plasma phenomena.

Contribution

It demonstrates a novel application of modern EFT techniques to finite temperature QED bound states, specifically muonic hydrogen, and explores connections to heavy quarkonium physics.

Findings

Finite temperature effects on muonic hydrogen are similar to heavy quarkonium.

Vacuum polarization significantly influences bound state behavior at finite temperature.

Finite charm quark mass impacts the dissociation temperature of bottomonium.

Abstract

We illustrate how to apply modern effective field theory techniques and dimensional regularization to factorise the various scales which appear in QED bound states at finite temperature. We focus here on the muonic hydrogen atom. Vacuum polarization effects make the physics of this atom at finite temperature very close to that of heavy quarkonium states. We comment on the implications of our results for these states in the quark gluon plasma. In particular, we estimate the effects of a finite charm quark mass in the dissociation temperature of bottomonium.