Covariant gauges at finite temperature

Abstract

A prescription is presented for real-time finite-temperature perturbation theory in covariant gauges, in which only the two physical degrees of freedom of the gauge-field propagator acquire thermal parts. The propagators for the unphysical degrees of freedom of the gauge field, and for the Faddeev-Popov ghost field, are independent of temperature. This prescription is applied to the calculation of the one-loop gluon self-energy and the two-loop interaction pressure, and is found to be simpler to use than the conventional one.

Comments: 11 pages plus pictex figures (the leading-temperature contributions given in sect 3.1 were incomplete) CERN-TH-6491/92, published in Nucl Phys B383 (1992) 607