Transport coefficients and ladder summation in hot gauge theories

Abstract

We show how to compute transport coefficients in gauge theories by considering the expansion of the Kubo formulas in terms of ladder diagrams in the imaginary time formalism. All summations over Matsubara frequencies are performed and the analytical continuation to get the retarded correlators is done. As an illustration of the procedure, we present a derivation of the transport equation for the shear viscosity in the scalar theory. Assuming the Hard Thermal Loop approximation for the screening of distant collisions of the hard particles in the plasma, we derive a couple of integral equations for the effective vertices which, to logarithmic accuracy, are shown to be identical to the linearized Boltzmann equations previously found by Arnold, Moore and Yaffe.