Deriving the hard thermal loops of QCD from classical transport theory

Relativistic diffusion

We discuss relativistic diffusion in proper time in the approach of Schay (Ph.D. thesis, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 1961) and Dudley [Ark. Mat. 6, 241 (1965)]. We derive (Langevin) stochastic differential equations in various coordinates. We show that in some coordinates the stochastic differential equations become linear. We obtain momentum probability distribution in an explicit form. We discuss a relativistic particle diffusing in an external electromagnetic field. We solve the Langevin equations in the case of parallel electric and magnetic fields. We derive a kinetic equation for the evolution of the probability distribution. We discuss drag terms leading to an equilibrium distribution. The relativistic analog of the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process is not unique. We show that if the drag comes from a diffusion approximation to the master equation then its form is strongly restricted. The drag leading to the Tsallis equilibrium distribution satisfies this restriction whereas the one of the Jüttner distribution does not. We show that any function of the relativistic energy can be the equilibrium distribution for a particle in a static electric field. A preliminary study of the time evolution with friction is presented. It is shown that the problem is equivalent to quantum mechanics of a particle moving on a hyperboloid with a potential determined by the drag. A relation to diffusions appearing in heavy ion collisions is briefly discussed.

Production mechanism of quark-gluon plasma in heavy-ion collisions

A general scheme is proposed here to describe the production of semihard and soft quarks and gluons that form the bulk of the plasma in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions. We show how to obtain the production rates in the extended phase space, including the color part, as a function of time in a consistent manner and without having to make ad hoc assumptions. All the required features-the back reaction on QCD vacuum, the non-Markovian nature of the production, and the quasi particle nature of the partons-are naturally incorporated. We illustrate the results with a realistic albeit toy model and also show how physically tenable source terms may be obtained.

Kinetic equation for gluons in the background gauge of QCD

We derive the quantum kinetic equation for a pure gluon plasma, applying the background field and closed-time-path method. The derivation is more general and transparent than earlier works. A term in the equation is found which, as in the classical case, corresponds to the color charge precession for partons moving in the gauge field.

Transport theory for a two-flavor color superconductor

QCD with two light-quark flavors at high baryonic density is a color superconductor. The diquark condensate breaks the SU(3) gauge symmetry down to an SU(2) subgroup. We study thermal fluctuations of the superconductor for temperatures below the gap. These are described by a simple transport equation. In the collisionless limit and close to equilibrium, it gives rise to the "hard superconducting loop" effective theory for the SU(2) gauge fields. This theory describes Debye screening and Landau damping of the gauge fields in the presence of the diquark condensate. We explain how our effective theory follows to one-loop order from quantum field theory. Our approach provides a convenient starting point for the computation of transport coefficients of the two-flavor color superconductor.