Quark mass dependent collective excitations and quark number susceptibilities within the hard thermal loop approximation

We calculate all those QCD $N$-point functions which are relevant for a three-loop QCD thermodynamics calculation with finite quark masses within the hard thermal loop approximation. Using the effective quark propagator, we also calculate second-order quark and baryon number susceptibilities within the hard thermal loop approximation and compare the results with available lattice data.

Figure 1

Quark self-energy.

Figure 2

Dispersion plots for the strange quark. The solid lines represent dispersion relations for the massive quark, whereas the dashed lines represent corresponding massless modes.

Figure 3

Dispersion plots for the strange quark. Dispersion relations from the full quark propagator are compared with the approximated one in Eq. (34).

Figure 4

Three-point quark-gluon vertex.

Figure 5

Left: Comparison of the one-loop HTLPT results for the scaled light quark and strange quark number susceptibilities with the lattice results [22]. Right: Comparison of the one-loop HTLPT results for the scaled light quark and baryon number susceptibilities with the lattice [22] and two-loop perturbative results [12].

Figure 6

Gluon self-energy diagram.

Figure 7

Debye mass and plasma frequency plotted with the temperature.

Figure 8

Gluon dispersion plots scaled with the massless plasma frequency of the plasma.