A Renormalization-Group Approach to Finite-Temperature Mass Corrections

Abstract

We illustrate how the reorganization of perturbation theory at finite temperature can be economically cast in terms of the Wilson-Polchinski renormalization methods. We take as an example the old saw of the induced thermal mass of a hot scalar field with a quartic coupling, which we compute to second order in the coupling constant. We show that the form of the result can be largely determined by renormalization-group arguments without the explicit evaluation of Feynman graphs.