The Secret Chern-Simons Action for the Hot Gluon Plasma

TL;DR

This paper reveals that the generating functional for hard thermal loops in QCD can be described by a Chern-Simons gauge theory, providing a simpler method to compute thermal loop contributions.

Contribution

It introduces a Chern-Simons action framework for hard thermal loops in QCD, simplifying calculations based on gauge invariance rather than Feynman diagrams.

Findings

The generating functional aligns with a Chern-Simons gauge theory.

Provides an efficient alternative to Feynman diagram calculations.

Highlights gauge invariance as a key principle in thermal QCD.

Abstract

We show that the generating functional for hard thermal loops with external gluons in QCD is essentially given by the eikonal for a Chern-Simons gauge theory. This action, determined essentially by gauge invariance arguments, also gives an efficient way of obtaining the hard thermal loop contributions without the more involved calculation of Feynman diagrams.