Statistical Physics and Light-Front Quantization
Light-front quantization has important advantages for describing relativistic statistical systems, particularly systems for which boost invariance is essential, such as the fireball created in a heavy ion collisions. In this paper the authors develop light-front field theory at finite temperature and density with special attention to quantum chromodynamics. They construct the most general form of the statistical operator allowed by the Poincare algebra and show that there are no zero-mode related problems when describing phase transitions. They then demonstrate a direct connection between densities in light-front thermal field theory and the parton distributions measured in hard scattering experiments. The approach thus generalizes the concept of a parton distribution to finite temperature. In light-front quantization, the gauge-invariant Green's functions of a quark in a medium can be defined in terms of just 2-component spinors and have a much simpler spinor structure than the equal-time fermion propagator. From the Green's function, the authors introduce the new concept of a light-front density matrix, whose matrix elements are related to forward and to off-diagonal parton distributions. Furthermore, they explain how thermodynamic quantities can be calculated in discretized light-cone quantization, which is applicable at high chemical potential and is not plagued by the fermion-doubling problems.
- Research Organization:
- SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (US)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC03-76SF00515
- OSTI ID:
- 829750
- Report Number(s):
- SLAC-PUB-10605; TRN: US0405849
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: PBD: 12 Aug 2004
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS
ALGEBRA
DENSITY MATRIX
FERMIONS
HEAVY IONS
LIGHT CONE
MATRIX ELEMENTS
PARTONS
PHYSICS
PROPAGATOR
QUANTIZATION
QUANTUM CHROMODYNAMICS
QUARKS
SCATTERING
SPINORS
THERMODYNAMICS