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

Abstract

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 the 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.