Ward identity and electrical conductivity in hot QED

Abstract

We study the Ward identity for the effective photon-electron vertex summing the ladder diagrams contributing to the electrical conductivity in hot QED at leading logarithmic order. It is shown that the Ward identity requires the inclusion of a new diagram in the integral equation for the vertex that has not been considered before. The real part of this diagram is subleading and therefore the final expressions for the electrical conductivity at leading logarithmic order are not affected.

Comments: 25 pages with 5 eps figures, discussion in section 3 improved; to appear in JHEP