Neutral Pion Decay Width in a Hot and Dense Medium

Abstract

We study the behavior of the ${\pi }^0$ width as a function of temperature and density. We provide simple expressions for the neutral pion width in a hot and dense medium based on a renormalized version of the microscopic Nambu Jona Lasinio model. Then we consider the two cases where the pion mass is finite or vanishes at the critical temperature and discuss the phenomenological consequences of both cases.

Comments: RevTeX, 11 pages, 11 figures, PRC version