Thermal 2-loop master spectral function at finite momentum

Abstract

When considering NLO corrections to thermal particle production in the "relativistic" regime, in which the invariant mass squared of the produced particle is K2 ∼ (πT)2, then the production rate can be expressed as a sum of a few universal "master" spectral functions. Taking the most complicated 2-loop master as an example, a general strategy for obtaining a convergent 2-dimensional integral representation is suggested. The analysis applies both to bosonic and fermionic statistics, and shows that for this master the non-relativistic approximation is only accurate for K2 ≳ (8πT)2, whereas the zero-momentum approximation works surprisingly well. Once the simpler masters have been similarly resolved, NLO results for quantities such as the right-handed neutrino production rate from a Standard Model plasma or the dilepton production rate from a QCD plasma can be assembled for K2 ∼ (πT)2. © 2013 SISSA, Trieste, Italy.