Transport Coefficients in Large $N_f$ Gauge Theory: Testing Hard Thermal Loops

Abstract

We compute shear viscosity and flavor diffusion coefficients for ultra-relativistic gauge theory with many fermionic species, Nf >> 1, to leading order in 1/Nf. The calculation is performed both at leading order in the effective coupling strength g^2 Nf, using the Hard Thermal Loop (HTL) approximation, and completely to all orders in g^2 Nf. This constitutes a nontrivial test of how well the HTL approximation works. We find that in this context, the HTL approximation works well wherever the renormalization point sensitivity of the leading order HTL result is small.