HEP/Astro Seminar, Wednesday 11th February 1998

Hard thermal loops, soft dynamics and the hot sphaleron rate

Dietrich Boedeker (Univ. of Heidelberg)

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Abstract

We consider time dependent correlation functions of non-abelian gauge
fields at finite temperature. An effective theory for the soft ($p\sim
g^2 T$) field modes is derived by integrating out the field modes with
momenta of order $T$ and of order $g T$ in a leading logarithmic
approximation. In this effective theory the time evolution of the soft
fields is determined by a local Langevin-type equation. As an
application, the rate for hot electroweak baryon number violation (hot
sphaleron rate) is estimated as $\Gamma \sim g^2 \log(1/g) (g^2 T)^4$.

Wednesday 3:30pm, Smith Lab 4079