Leading order calculation of shear viscosity in hot quantum electrodynamics from diagrammatic methods

Journal Article · Thu Nov 15 04:00:00 EST 2007 · Physical Review. D, Particles Fields

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PHYSREVD.76.105019· OSTI ID:21027897

Gagnon, Jean-Sebastien; Jeon, Sangyong ^[1]

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1. Physics Department, McGill University, 3600 University Street, Montreal, H3A 2T8 (Canada)

We compute the shear viscosity at leading order in hot quantum electrodynamics. Starting from the Kubo relation for shear viscosity, we use diagrammatic methods to write down the appropriate integral equations for bosonic and fermionic effective vertices. We also show how Ward identities can be used to put constraints on these integral equations. One of our main results is an equation relating the kernels of the integral equations with functional derivatives of the full self-energy; it is similar to what is obtained with two-particle-irreducible effective action methods. However, since we use Ward identities as our starting point, gauge invariance is preserved. Using these constraints obtained from Ward identities and also power counting arguments, we select the necessary diagrams that must be resummed at leading order. This includes all noncollinear (corresponding to 2 to 2 scatterings) and collinear (corresponding to 1+N to 2+N collinear scatterings) rungs responsible for the Landau-Pomeranchuk-Migdal effect. We also show the equivalence between our integral equations obtained from quantum field theory and the linearized Boltzmann equations of Arnold, Moore and Yaffe obtained using effective kinetic theory.

• OSTI ID: 21027897
• Journal Information: Physical Review. D, Particles Fields, Journal Name: Physical Review. D, Particles Fields Journal Issue: 10 Vol. 76; ISSN PRVDAQ; ISSN 0556-2821
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS
ACTION INTEGRAL
BOLTZMANN EQUATION
FERMIONS
FEYNMAN DIAGRAM
GAUGE INVARIANCE
INTEGRAL EQUATIONS
QUANTUM ELECTRODYNAMICS
SCATTERING
SELF-ENERGY
VISCOSITY
WARD IDENTITY