2007/08/31 by Peter Arnold, PETER ARNOLD · 5 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Dust and Plasma Wave Phenomena #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Quantum and Classical Electrodynamics #hep-ph #nucl-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1142/s021830130700832x
published as Int.J.Mod.Phys.E16:2555-2594,2007 · 40 pages; based on lectures given at X Hadron Physics in Florianopolis, SC, Brazil, March 26-31, 2007 [another small typo fixed]
openalex publication_date 2007/10/01 · arxiv created 2008/01/14 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In these lectures, I will attempt a pedagogical and qualitative introduction to the theory of equilibrium and thermalization of quark-gluon plasmas. I assume only that the reader is familiar with quantum field theory at zero temperature and with QCD as the theory of the strong interactions. I focus on the limit of small α s , which in principle should be relevant at extremely high temperature because of asymptotic freedom, and in any case provides a clean theoretical context in which to discuss a variety of phenomena. Topics discussed include the basic equilibrium formalism for finite-temperature quantum field theory, Debye screening, electric deconfinement, magnetic confinement, dimensional reduction, plasma waves, kinetic theory, hydrodynamic properties such as viscosity, the Landau–Pomeranchuk–Migdal effect, thermalization in (arbitrarily high energy) heavy ion collisions, and QCD plasma instabilities.