Soft Modes, Resonances and Quantum Transport

Abstract

Effects of the propagation of particles, which have a finite life-time and an according width in their mass spectrum, are discussed in the context of transport description. First, the importance of coherence effects (Landau-Pomeranchuk-Migdal effect) on production and absorption of field quanta in non-equilibrium dense matter is considered. It is shown that classical diffusion and Langevin results correspond to re-summation of certain field-theory diagrams formulated in terms of full non-equilibrium Green's functions. Then the general properties of broad resonances in dense and hot systems are discussed in the framework of a self-consistent and conserving Phi-derivable method of Baym at the examples of the rho-meson in hadronic matter and the pion in dilute nuclear matter. Further we address the problem of a transport description that properly accounts for the damping width of the particles. The Phi-derivable method generalized to the real-time contour provides a self-consistent and conserving kinetic scheme. We derive a generalized expression for the non-equilibrium kinetic entropy flow, which includes corrections from fluctuations and mass-width effects. In special cases an H-theorem is proved. Memory effects in collision terms give contributions to the kinetic entropy flow that in the Fermi-liquid case recover the famous bosonic type T^3 ln T correction to the specific heat of liquid Helium-3. At the example of the pion-condensate phase transition in dense nuclear matter we demonstrate important part played by the width effects within the quantum transport.

submitted to Phys. At. Nucl. (Rus.), the volume dedicated to the memory of A.B. Migdal. 31 pages, 5 figures