A Brief Overview of Hard-Thermal-Loop Perturbation Theory

The poor convergence of quantum field theory at finite temperature has been one of the main obstacles in the practical applications of thermal QCD for decades. Here we briefly review the progress of hard-thermal-loop perturbation theory （HTLpt） in reorganizing the perturbative expansion in order to...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inCommunications in theoretical physics Vol. 57; no. 3; pp. 409 - 421
Main Author Su, Nan
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published 01.03.2012
Subjects
Breakdown
Convergence
Dynamical systems
Mathematical analysis
Oscillators
Perturbation theory
QCD
Quantum electrodynamics
Quantum mechanics
大型强子对撞机
微扰展开
摄动理论
有限温度
热力学计算
热环
量子场论
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ISSN0253-6102
DOI10.1088/0253-6102/57/3/12

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Summary:The poor convergence of quantum field theory at finite temperature has been one of the main obstacles in the practical applications of thermal QCD for decades. Here we briefly review the progress of hard-thermal-loop perturbation theory （HTLpt） in reorganizing the perturbative expansion in order to improve the convergence. The quantum mechanical anharmonic oscillator is used as a simple example to show the breakdown of weak-coupling expansion, and variational perturbation theory is introduced as an effective resummation scheme for divergent weak-coupling expansions. We discuss HTLpt thermodynamic calculations for QED, pure-glue QCD, and QCD with Nf = 3 up to three-loop order. The results suggest that HTLpt provides a systematic framework that can be used to calculate both static and dynamic quantities for temperatures relevant at LHC.
Bibliography:11-2592/O3
The poor convergence of quantum field theory at finite temperature has been one of the main obstacles in the practical applications of thermal QCD for decades. Here we briefly review the progress of hard-thermal-loop perturbation theory （HTLpt） in reorganizing the perturbative expansion in order to improve the convergence. The quantum mechanical anharmonic oscillator is used as a simple example to show the breakdown of weak-coupling expansion, and variational perturbation theory is introduced as an effective resummation scheme for divergent weak-coupling expansions. We discuss HTLpt thermodynamic calculations for QED, pure-glue QCD, and QCD with Nf = 3 up to three-loop order. The results suggest that HTLpt provides a systematic framework that can be used to calculate both static and dynamic quantities for temperatures relevant at LHC.
thermal field theory, resummation, hard thermal loops
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ISSN:0253-6102
DOI:10.1088/0253-6102/57/3/12