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Register a new userThe Breakdown of Resummed Perturbation Theory at High Energies
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Sebastian Schenk
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Calculations of high-energy processes involving the production of a large number of particles in weakly-coupled quantum field theories have previously signaled the need for novel non-perturbative behavior or even new physical phenomena. In some scenarios, already tree-level computations may enter the regime of large-order perturbation theory and therefore require a careful investigation. We demonstrate that in scalar quantum field theories with a unique global minimum, where suitably resummed perturbative expansions are expected to capture all relevant physical effects, perturbation theory may still suffer from severe shortcomings in the high-energy regime. As an example, we consider the computation of multiparticle threshold amplitudes of the form $1 to n$ in $varphi^6$ theory with a positive mass term, and show that they violate unitarity of the quantum theory for large $n$, even after the resummation of all leading-$n$ quantum corrections. We further argue that this is a generic feature of scalar field theories with higher-order self-interactions beyond $varphi^4$, thereby rendering the latter unique with respect to its high-energy behavior.
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Cumulants of conserved charges provide important information about the physics of the quark-gluon plasma around the phase transition region, as they are by construction sensitive to changes in the degrees of freedom of the system. In this brief proceedings contribution, I report on recent results for two such quantities from two different improved perturbative frameworks, as well as discuss their relevance for heavy ion experiments.
We evaluate the second and fourth order quark number susceptibilities in hot QCD using two variations of resummed perturbation theory. On one hand, we carry out a one-loop calculation within hard-thermal-loop perturbation theory, and on the other hand perform a resummation of the four-loop finite density equation of state derived using a dimensionally reduced effective theory. Our results are subsequently compared with recent high precision lattice data, and their agreement thoroughly analyzed.
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We discuss the determination of the strong coupling $alpha_mathrm{overline{MS}}^{}(m_mathrm{Z})$ or equivalently the QCD $Lambda$-parameter. Its determination requires the use of perturbation theory in $alpha_s(mu)$ in some scheme, $s$, and at some energy scale $mu$. The higher the scale $mu$ the more accurate perturbation theory becomes, owing to asymptotic freedom. As one step in our computation of the $Lambda$-parameter in three-flavor QCD, we perform lattice computations in a scheme which allows us to non-perturbatively reach very high energies, corresponding to $alpha_s = 0.1$ and below. We find that (continuum) perturbation theory is very accurate there, yielding a three percent error in the $Lambda$-parameter, while data around $alpha_s approx 0.2$ is clearly insufficient to quote such a precision. It is important to realize that these findings are expected to be generic, as our scheme has advantageous properties regarding the applicability of perturbation theory.
In this Ph.D. thesis, the primary goal is to present a recent investigation of the finite density thermodynamics of hot and dense quark-gluon plasma. As we are interested in a temperature regime, in which naive perturbation theory is known to lose its predictive power, we clearly need to use a refined approach. To this end, we adopt a resummed perturbation theory point of view and employ two different frameworks. We first use hard-thermal-loop perturbation theory (HLTpt) at leading order to obtain the pressure for nonvanishing quark chemical potentials, and next, inspired by dimensional reduction, resum the known four-loop weak coupling expansion for the quantity. We present and analyze our findings for various cumulants of conserved charges. This provides us with information, through correlations and fluctuations, on the degrees of freedom effectively present in the quark-gluon plasma right above the deconfinement transition. Moreover, we compare our results with state-of-the-art lattice Monte Carlo simulations as well as with a recent three-loop mass truncated HTLpt calculation. We obtain very good agreement between the two different perturbative schemes, as well as between them and lattice data, down to surprisingly low temperatures right above the phase transition. We also quantitatively test the convergence of an approximation, which is used in higher order loop calculations in HTLpt. This method based on expansions in mass parameters, is unavoidable beyond leading order, thus motivating our investigation. We find the ensuing convergence to be very fast, validating its use in higher order computations.
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