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arxiv: 0906.2936 · v3 · submitted 2009-06-16 · ✦ hep-ph · hep-th· nucl-th

Three-loop HTL Free Energy for QED

classification ✦ hep-ph hep-thnucl-th
keywords energyfreeloopsperturbationreorganizationthreecalculatecoupling
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We calculate the free energy of a hot gas of electrons and photons to three loops using the hard-thermal-loop perturbation theory reorganization of finite-temperature perturbation theory. We calculate the free energy through three loops by expanding in a power series in m_D/T, m_f/T, and e^2, where m_D and m_f are thermal masses and e is the coupling constant. We demonstrate that the hard-thermal-loop perturbation reorganization improves the convergence of the successive approximations to the QED free energy at large coupling, e ~ 2. The reorganization is gauge invariant by construction, and due to cancellation among various contributions, we obtain a completely analytic result for the resummed thermodynamic potential at three loops. Finally, we compare our result with similar calculations that use the Phi-derivable approach.

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