Light-front field theories at finite temperature

TL;DR

This paper addresses the challenges of extending light-front field theories to finite temperature, proposing a proper relativistic approach and analyzing issues like non-analyticity and tensor decomposition in scalar and fermion theories.

Contribution

It introduces a correct method for formulating light-front field theories at finite temperature, overcoming problems of naive generalizations.

Findings

Identified issues with naive generalization of light-front theories at finite temperature.

Developed a relativistic framework for thermal light-front field theories.

Discussed non-analyticity and tensor decomposition in scalar and fermion cases.

Abstract

We study the question of generalizing light-front field theories to finite temperature. We show that the naive generalization has serious problems and we identify the source of the difficulty. We provide a proper generalization of these theories to finite temperature based on a relativistic description of thermal field theories, both in the real and the imaginary time formalisms. Various issues associated with scalar and fermion theories, such as non-analyticity of self-energy, tensor decomposition are discussed in detail.