Medium effects on the electrical conductivity of a hot pion gas

Abstract

The electromagnetic response of an interacting system of pions has been studied at finite temperature. The corresponding transport parameter i.e. electrical conductivity has been estimated by solving the relativistic transport equation in presence of a finite electric field employing the Chapman-Enskog technique where the collision term has been treated in the relaxation time approximation. The scattering amplitudes of charged pions modeled by $\rho$ and $\sigma$ meson exchange using an effective Lagrangian have been obtained at finite temperature by introducing self-energy corrections in the thermal propagators in the real time formalism. The temperature behavior of electrical conductivity for a hot pion gas shows significant quantitative enhancement due to the inclusion of medium effects in scattering.