No Arabic abstract
In this review article, we discuss the current status and future prospects of perturbation theory as a means of studying the equilibrium thermodynamic and near-equilibrium transport properties of deconfined QCD matter. We begin with a brief introduction to the general topic, after which we review in some detail the foundations and modern techniques of the real- and imaginary-time formalisms of thermal field theory, covering e.g. the different bases used in the real-time formalism and the resummations required to deal with soft and collinear contributions. After this, we discuss the current status of applications of these techniques, including topics such as electromagnetic rates, transport coefficients, jet quenching, heavy quarks and quarkonia, and the Equations of State of hot quark-gluon plasma as well as cold and dense quark matter. Finally, we conclude with our view of the future directions of the field, i.e. how we anticipate perturbative calculations to contribute to our collective understanding of strongly interacting matter in the coming years.
In this paper, we compute the constrained QCD effective potential up to two-loop order with finite quark mass and chemical potential. We present the explicit calculations by using the double line notation and analytical expressions for massless quarks are obtained in terms of the Bernoulli polynomials or Polyakov loops. Our results explicitly show that the constrained QCD effective potential is independent on the gauge fixing parameter. In addition, as compared to the massless case, the constrained QCD effective potential with massive quarks develops a completely new term which is only absent when the background field vanishes. Furthermore, we discuss the relation between the one- and two-loop constrained effective potential. The surprisingly simple proportionality that exists in the pure gauge theories, however, is in general no longer true when fermions are taken into account. On the other hand, for high baryon density $mu_B$ and low temperature $T$, in the massless limit, we do also find a similar proportionality between the one- and two-loop fermionic contributions in the constrained effective potential up to ${cal O}(T/mu_B)$.
Due to the angular condition in the light-front dynamics (LFD), the extraction of the electromagnetic form factors for spin-1 particles can be uniquely determined taking into account implicitly non-valence and/or the zero-mode contributions to the matrix elements of the electromagnetic current. No matter which matrix elements of the electromagnetic current is used to extract the electromagnetic form factors, the same unique result is obtained. As physical observables, the electromagnetic form factors obtained from matrix elements of the current in LFD must be equal to those obtained in the instant form calculations. Recently, the Babar collaboration cite{Aubert2008} has analyzed the reaction $e^+ e^-rightarrow rho^+ + rho^-$ at $sqrt{s}=10.58 GeV$ to measure the cross section as well as the ratios of the helicity amplitudes $F_{lambdalambda}$. We present our recent analysis of the Babar data for the rho meson considering the angular condition in LFD to put a stringent test on the onset of asymptotic perturbative QCD and predict the energy regime where the subleading contributions are still considerable.
The predictive power of perturbative QCD (pQCD) depends on two important issues: (1) how to eliminate the renormalization scheme-and-scale ambiguities at fixed order, and (2) how to reliably estimate the contributions of unknown higher-order terms using information from the known pQCD series. The Principle of Maximum Conformality (PMC) satisfies all of the principles of the renormalization group and eliminates the scheme-and-scale ambiguities by the recursive use of the renormalization group equation to determine the scale of the QCD running coupling $alpha_s$ at each order. Moreover, the resulting PMC predictions are independent of the choice of the renormalization scheme, satisfying the key principle of renormalization group invariance. In this letter, we show that by using the conformal series derived using the PMC single-scale procedure, in combination with the Pade Approximation Approach (PAA), one can achieve quantitatively useful estimates for the unknown higher-order terms from the known perturbative series. We illustrate this procedure for three hadronic observables $R_{e^+e^-}$, $R_{tau}$, and $Gamma(H to b bar{b})$ which are each known to 4 loops in pQCD. We show that if the PMC prediction for the conformal series for an observable (of leading order $alpha_s^p$) has been determined at order $alpha^n_s$, then the $[N/M]=[0/n-p]$ Pade series provides quantitatively useful predictions for the higher-order terms. We also show that the PMC + PAA predictions agree at all orders with the fundamental, scheme-independent Generalized Crewther relations which connect observables, such as deep inelastic neutrino-nucleon scattering, to hadronic $e^+e^-$ annihilation. Thus, by using the combination of the PMC series and the Pade method, the predictive power of pQCD theory can be greatly improved.
Collider experiments often exploit information about the quantum numbers of final state hadrons to maximize their sensitivity, with applications ranging from the use of tracking information (electric charge) for precision jet substructure measurements, to flavor tagging for nucleon structure studies. For such measurements perturbative calculations in terms of quarks and gluons are insufficient, and non-perturbative track functions describing the energy fraction of a quark or gluon converted into a subset of hadrons (e.g. charged hadrons), must be incorporated. Unlike fragmentation functions, track functions describe correlations between hadrons, and therefore satisfy complicated non-linear evolution equations whose structure has so far eluded calculation beyond the leading order. In this Letter we develop an understanding of track functions, and their interplay with energy flow observables, beyond the leading order, allowing them to be used in state-of-the-art perturbative calculations for the first time. We identify a shift symmetry in the evolution of their moments that fixes their structure, and we explicitly compute the evolution of the first three moments at next-to-leading order, allowing for the description of up to three-point energy correlations. We then calculate the two-point energy correlator on charged particles at $O(alpha_s^2)$, illustrating explicitly that infrared singularities in perturbation theory are absorbed by moments of the track functions, and also highlighting how these moments seamlessly interplay with modern techniques for perturbative calculations. Our results extend the boundaries of traditional perturbative QCD, enabling precision perturbative predictions for energy flow observables sensitive to the quantum numbers of hadronic states.
In order to study the detailed dynamics and associated non-perturbative features of QCD, a dual version of the color gauge theory based on the topologically viable homogeneous fiber bundle approach has been analysed taking into account its magnetic symmetry structure. In the dynamically broken phase of magnetic symmetry, the associated flux tube structure on a S 2 -sphere in the magnetically condensed state of the dual QCD vacuum has been analyzed for the profiles of the color electric field using flux quantization and stability conditions. The color electric field has its intimate association with the vector mode of the magnetically condensed QCD vacuum and such field configurations have been analyzed to show that the color electric flux gets localized towards the poles for a large sphere case while it gets uniformly distributed for the small sphere case in the infrared sector of QCD. The critical flux tube densities have been computed for various couplings and are shown to be in agreement with that for lead-ion central collisions in the near infrared sector of QCD. The possible annihilation/unification of flux tubes under some typical flux tube density and temperature conditions in the magnetic symmetry broken phase of QCD has also been analyzed and shown to play an important role in the process of QGP formation. The thermal variation of the profiles of the color electic field is further investigated which indicates the survival of flux tubes even in the thermal domain that leads the possibility of the formation of some exotic states like QGP in the intermedate regime during the quark-hadron phase transition.