Hadrons at finite temperature (Q2825380)

This book provides a very much self-contained description of hadronic physics both at zero and finite temperature. The finite temperature study of hadronic interactions becomes especially important in light of heavy ion collisions and current and future experiments. It gives a brief introduction to thermal field theory, although due to its brevity some details are missing that could be desired by the unexperienced reader.NEWLINENEWLINEThe self-containedness manifests itself in the first three chapters that provide a concise summary of relativistic quantum field theory, spontaneous symmetry breaking and \(\sigma\)-models, as well as chiral perturbation theory that is inevitable in the context of hadron physics. All necessary ingredients to deal with the main part of the book are given, even so it makes the appearance of a lexicographical listing of relevant objects. This trait, however, qualifies the book for a quick look-up. The digression to thermal quantum field theory and thermal perturbation theory uses and introduces the real time method in contrast to the common literature which prefers the imaginary time method as out-of-equilibrium processes are preferably calculated in that method. The closing chapter deals with non-equilibrium processes. Before that, dilepton production rates are calculated in heavy ion collisions, both for the quark-gluon plasma and the hot hadronic phase. This process is of great interest to detect chiral symmetry restoration and the phase transition to the quark-gluon plasma.NEWLINENEWLINEAt the end of each chapter a set of a few problems can be found where also solutions to the problems are provided.