Basics of thermal field theory -- a tutorial on perturbative computations

Abstract

These lecture notes, suitable for a two-semester introductory course or self-study, offer an elementary and self-contained exposition of the basic tools and concepts that are encountered in practical computations in perturbative thermal field theory. Selected applications to heavy ion collision physics and cosmology are outlined in the last chapter.

228 pages. v2: streamlines and additions

References in corpus (16)

• Minkowski-space correlators in AdS/CFT correspondence: recipe and applications
• The Sphaleron Rate in the Minimal Standard Model
• Dark-matter sterile neutrinos in models with a gauge singlet in the Higgs sector
• Baryogenesis from the weak scale to the grand unification scale
• The stickiness of sound: An absolute lower limit on viscosity and the breakdown of second order relativistic hydrodynamics
• Perturbative Thermal QCD: Formalism and Applications
• Thermal production of relativistic Majorana neutrinos: Strong enhancement by multiple soft scattering
• Kubo Formulae for Second-Order Hydrodynamic Coefficients
• The leading non-perturbative coefficient in the weak-coupling expansion of hot QCD pressure
• Moduli decay in the hot early Universe
• Swampland, Axions and Minimal Warm Inflation
• Heavy quark chemical equilibration rate as a transport coefficient
• Dileptons, spectral weights, and conductivity in the Quark-Gluon Plasma
• Hard thermal loops in the real-time formalism
• The HTL Lagrangian at NLO: the photon case
• On the dispersion of fundamental particles in QCD and N=4 Super Yang-Mills theory

Cited by in corpus (174)

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• Fingerprint of Low-Scale Leptogenesis in the Primordial Gravitational-Wave Spectrum
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• Runaway potentials in warm inflation satisfying the swampland conjectures
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• Spectral representation of lattice gluon and ghost propagators at zero temperature
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• Screening masses in strong external magnetic fields
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• Towards Schwinger production of magnetic monopoles in heavy-ion collisions
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• Gravitational waves from supercooled phase transitions: dimensional transmutation meets dimensional reduction
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• Effects of rotation and acceleration in the axial current: density operator vs Wigner function
• Freezing-in a hot bath: resonances, medium effects and phase transitions
• Real scalar phase transitions: a nonperturbative analysis
• Fluctuations and correlations of net baryon number, electric charge and strangeness in a background magnetic field
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• Geometrically confined thermal field theory: Finite size corrections and phase transitions
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• Warm Inflation with the Standard Model
• Black holes from large N singlet models
• Kinetic equations for sterile neutrinos from thermal fluctuations
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• The QCD Axion: Some Like It Hot
• Quantum Mechanical Out-Of-Time-Ordered-Correlators for the Anharmonic (Quartic) Oscillator
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• Analytic Transport from Weak to Strong Coupling in the O(N) model
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• Gauge-invariant screening masses and static quark free energies in $N_f=2+1$ QCD at non-zero baryon density
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• Scalar field damping at high temperatures
• Symmetry breaking at high temperatures in large N gauge theories
• Soft photon propagation in a hot and dense medium to next-to-leading order
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• Conformal Leptogenesis in Composite Higgs Models
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• Real-time observables in de Sitter thermodynamics
• Chiral magnetic effect in the hadronic phase
• Bubble dynamics in the Polyakov quark-meson model
• Power corrections to the photon polarization tensor in a hot and dense medium of massive fermions
• Thermodynamics of strongly magnetized dense quark matter from hard dense loop perturbation theory
• Probing Quarkonium Diffusion in a Magnetized Quark-Gluon Plasma
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• Spacing Statistics of Energy Spectra: Random Matrices, Black Hole Thermalization, and Echoes
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• On kinetic theories with color and spin from amplitudes
• Baryonic thermal screening mass at NLO
• Quasiparticle Cosmology
• Finite size effects in the phase transition patterns of coupled scalar field systems
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• Momentum expansions in finite-density perturbative calculations
• Finite-size effects and scaling properties of chiral and baryon-number fluctuations
• The thermal representation of conformal ladder integrals
• Interacting quark matter effects on the structure of compact stars
• Cosmology from Strong Interactions
• Heavy Quarkonium at finite temperature and chemical potential
• HTL effective action of topologically massive gluons in 3+1 dimensions
• On the Observer Dependence of the Quantum Effective Potential
• A Catalog of First-Order Electroweak Phase Transitions in the Standard Model Effective Field Theory
• Super-heated first order phase transitions
• Non-perturbative constraints on perturbation theory at finite temperature
• Hard thermal contributions to phase transition observables at NNLO
• The hyperfine splitting in QCD mesonic screening masses at asymptotically large temperatures
• The Polyakov loop dependence of bulk viscosity of QCD matter
• Speed of sound in cosmological phase transitions and effect on gravitational waves