One-loop effective action of QCD at high temperature using the heat kernel method

Abstract

Perturbation theory is an important tool to describe the properties of QCD at very high temperatures. Recently a new technique has been proposed to compute the one-loop effective action of QCD at finite temperature by making a gauge covariant derivative expansion, which is fully consistent with topologically small and large gauge transformations (also time dependent transformations). This technique is based on the heat kernel expansion, and the thermal Wilson line plays an essential role. We consider a general SU(N_c) gauge group.