Photon production rate from Transverse-Longitudinal ($T-L$) mesonic correlator on the lattice

Abstract

Thermal photons from the QGP provide important information about the interaction among plasma constituents. The photon production rate from a thermally equilibrated system is proportional to the transverse spectral function $\rho_T(\omega=|\vec k|, \vec k)$. One can also calculate the photon production rate from the difference between $\rho_T(\omega,\vec k)$ (transverse) and $\rho_L(\omega,\vec k)$ (longitudinal) projections, as $\rho_L$ vanishes on the photon point. Because the UV part of $\rho_T-\rho_L$ is suppressed, the corresponding Euclidean correlator receives most of its contribution from the IR part. We calculate the $T\!-\!L$ correlator on $N_f=2+1$ flavour HISQ configurations with $m_l=m_s/5$ at temperature of about $1.15\,T_{pc}$ (220 MeV). We have used two ans\"{a}tze for the spectral function: 1) A polynomial connected to the UV region consistent with OPE expansion and 2) a hydro-inspired spectral function. We have also applied the Backus-Gilbert method to estimate the spectral function. All these different approaches are combined to estimate the photon production rate.