• DOI:10.1103/PHYSREVD.23.2305
• Corpus ID: 120436700

High-temperature Yang-Mills theories and three-dimensional quantum chromodynamics

@article{Appelquist1981HightemperatureYT,
  title={High-temperature Yang-Mills theories and three-dimensional quantum chromodynamics},
  author={Thomas Appelquist and Robert D. Pisarski},
  journal={Physical Review D},
  year={1981},
  volume={23},
  pages={2305-2317}
}

• T. Appelquist, R. Pisarski
• Published 15 May 1981
• Physics
• Physical Review D

We demonstrate that for sufficiently high temperature T the behavior of any four-dimensional gauge theory with small coupling constant a, at distances beyond the electrical Debye screening length j/sub D/approx.1/..sqrt..a-barT, is determined precisely by the corresponding three-dimensional theory. This is the magnetic sector of the original theory, and in the non-Abelian case it is a Yang-Mills theory like three-dimensional quantum chromodynamics (QCD/sub 3/). We study QCD/sub 3/ in the loop expansion, which is only valid for distances or approx. =1/aT cannot be directly probed in the loop expansion, however. We present a simpler model which is calculable in this infrared limit, and which might serve as a prototype for QCD/sub 3/.more » The model is massless scalar QED/sub 3/, which with N charged scalars is soluble in a 1/N expansion as N..-->..infinity. Using the 1/N expansion, we demonstrate that infrared softening occurs: the long-range behavior of the photon propagator in massless scalar QED/sub 3/ is less singular than that of free fields. Infrared softening might also occur in QCD/sub 3/, although it cannot be demonstrated to finite order in the loop expansion. The implications of an assumed infrared softening in QCD/sub 3/ for the magnetic sector of Yang-Mills theories at high temperatures are also discussed.« less