Towards softer scales in hot QCD

Abstract

An effective theory for the soft field modes in hot QCD has been obtained recently by integrating out the field modes of momenta of order T and g T. The mean hard particle distribution obeys a transport equation with a collision term. The scale that comes out for the soft field is g^2 T ln 1/g . N-gluon soft amplitudes are shown to be a sum of tree diagrams and to obey tree-like Ward identities. These effective amplitudes are used to compute the one-soft loop contribution to the gluon self-energy when the loop momentum is of order g^2 T ln 1/g. It allows to identify a new collision term which, when included into the transport equation, takes into account collisions with gluon exchange of order g^2 T ln 1/g. The infrared behaviour of the collision term exhibits a significant change.