Hard-thermal-loop Resummation of the Thermodynamics of a Hot Gluon Plasma

TL;DR

This paper computes the thermodynamic properties of a hot gluon plasma using leading-order hard-thermal-loop perturbation theory, incorporating screening effects, quasiparticles, and damping, and compares results with lattice and quasiparticle models.

Contribution

It provides the first leading-order HTL resummation of gluon plasma thermodynamics, including divergence cancellation and comparison with other models.

Findings

HTL thermodynamic functions agree with lattice results for T > 2 T_c

Deviations are consistent with next-to-leading order corrections

Ultraviolet divergences are successfully canceled by counterterms

Abstract

We calculate the thermodynamic functions of a hot gluon plasma to leading order in hard-thermal-loop (HTL) perturbation theory. Effects associated with screening, gluon quasiparticles, and Landau damping are resummed to all orders. The ultraviolet divergences generated by the HTL propagator corrections can be cancelled by a counterterm that depends on the thermal gluon mass parameter. The HTL thermodynamic functions are compared to those from lattice gauge theory calculations and from quasiparticle models. For reasonable values of the HTL parameters, the deviations from lattice results for T > 2 T_c have the correct sign and roughly the correct magnitude to be accounted for by next-to-leading order corrections in HTL perturbation theory.