Strict next-to-leading order (NLO) results for the dilepton production rate from a QCD plasma at temperatures above a few hundred MeV suffer from a breakdown of the loop expansion in the regime of soft invariant masses M^2 << (pi T)^2. In this regime an LPM resummation is needed for obtaining the correct leading-order result. We show how to construct an interpolation between the hard NLO and the leading-order LPM expression. The final numerical results are presented in a tabulated form, suitable for insertion into hydrodynamical codes.
We confront the thermal NLO vector spectral function (both the transverse and longitudinal channel with respect to spatial momentum, both above and below the light cone) with continuum-extrapolated lattice data (both quenched and with $N_{rm f} = 2$, at $T sim 1.2 T_{rm c}$). The perturbative side incorporates new results, whose main features are summarized. The resolution of the lattice data is good enough to constrain the scale choice of $alpha_{rm s}$ on the perturbative side. The comparison supports the previous indication that the true spectral function falls below the resummed NLO one in a substantial frequency domain. Our results may help to scrutinize direct spectral reconstruction attempts from lattice QCD.
We discuss some problems concerning the application of perturbative QCD to high energy processes. In particular for hard processes, we analyze higher order and higher twist corrections. It is argued that these effects are of great importance for understanding the behaviour of pion electromagnetic form factor at moderately large momentum transfers. For soft processes, we show that summing the contributions of the lowest twist operators leads to a Regge-like amplitude.
We present new lattice results on the continuum extrapolation of the vector current correlation function. Lattice calculations have been carried out in the deconfined phase at a temperature of 1.1 Tc, extending our previous results at 1.45 Tc, utilizing quenched non-perturbatively clover-improved Wilson fermions and light quark masses. A systematic analysis on multiple lattice spacings allows to perform the continuum limit of the correlation function and to extract spectral properties in the continuum limit. Our current analysis suggests the results for the electrical conductivity are proportional to the temperature and the thermal dilepton rates in the quark gluon plasma are comparable for both temperatures. Preliminary results of the continuum extrapolated correlation function at finite momenta, which relates to thermal photon rates, are also presented.
We have computed the hard dilepton production rate from a weakly magnetized deconfined QCD medium within one-loop photon self-energy by considering one hard and one thermomagnetic resummed quark propagator in the loop. In the presence of the magnetic field, the resummed propagator leads to four quasiparticle modes. The production of hard dileptons consists of rates when all four quasiquarks originating from the poles of the propagator individually annihilate with a hard quark coming from a bare propagator in the loop. Besides these, there are also contributions from a mixture of pole and Landau cut part. In weak field approximation, the magnetic field appears as a perturbative correction to the thermal contribution. Since the calculation is very involved, for a first effort as well as for simplicity, we obtained the rate up to first order in the magnetic field, i.e., ${cal O}[(eB)]$, which causes a marginal improvement over that in the absence of magnetic field.
Universality in QCD factorization of parton densities, fragmentation functions, and soft factors is endangered by the process dependence of the directions of Wilson lines in their definitions. We find a choice of directions that is consistent with factorization and that gives universality between e^+e^- annihilation, semi-inclusive deep-inelastic scattering, and the Drell-Yan process. Universality is only modified by a time-reversal transformation of the soft function and parton densities between Drell-Yan and the other processes, whose only effect is the known reversal of sign for T-odd parton densities like the Sivers function. The modifications of the definitions needed to remove rapidity divergences with light-like Wilson lines do not affect the results.