Title: Next-to-Next-to-Next-to-Leading Order Pressure of Cold Quark Matter: Leading Logarithm

Abstract

At high baryon chemical potential μB, the equation of state of QCD allows a weak-coupling expansion in the QCD coupling α_s. The result is currently known up to and including the full next-to-next-to-leading order α$$^{2}_{s}$$. Starting at this order, the computations are complicated by the modification of particle propagation in a dense medium, which necessitates nonperturbative treatment of the scale α$$^{1/2}_{s}$$μ_B. We apply a hard-thermal-loop scheme for capturing the contributions of this scale to the weak-coupling expansion, and we use it to determine the leading-logarithm contribution to next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order: α$$^{3}_{s}$$ln²α_s. This result is the first improvement to the equation of state of massless cold quark matter in 40 years. The new term is negligibly small and thus significantly increases our confidence in the applicability of the weak-coupling expansion.

Authors:

Gorda, Tyler; Kurkela, Aleksi; Romatschke, Paul; Säppi, Matias; Vuorinen, Aleksi

Publication Date:

Tue Nov 13 00:00:00 EST 2018

Research Org.:

Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, CO (United States)

Sponsoring Org.:

USDOE Office of Science (SC)

OSTI Identifier:

1481937

Alternate Identifier(s):

OSTI ID: 1612783

Grant/Contract Number:  

SC0017905

Resource Type:

Published Article

Journal Name:

Physical Review Letters

Additional Journal Information:

Journal Name: Physical Review Letters Journal Volume: 121 Journal Issue: 20; Journal ID: ISSN 0031-9007

Publisher:

American Physical Society

Country of Publication:

United States

Language:

English

Subject:

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS; Physics; Equations of state of nuclear matter; Finite temperature field theory; Nuclear matter in neutron stars; Perturbative QCD; Quark-gluon plasma; Neutron stars & pulsars; Ab initio calculations