Year: 2001
Type: article
Abstract: Photon production from a thermalized quark-gluon plasma of finite lifetime is studied directly in real time with a nonequilibrium formulation that includes off-shell (energy nonconserving) effects. To lowest order we find that production of direct photons form a quark-gluon plasma of temperature $T\ensuremath{\sim}200 \mathrm{MeV}$ and lifetime $t\ensuremath{\sim}10--20 \mathrm{fm}/c$ is strongly enhanced by off-shell (anti)quark bremsstrahlung $q(\overline{q})\ensuremath{\rightarrow}q(\overline{q})\ensuremath{\gamma}.$ The yield from this nonequilibrium finite-lifetime effect dominates over those obtained from higher order equilibrium rate calculations in the range of energy $E>2 \mathrm{GeV}$ and falls off with a power law for $E\ensuremath{\gg}T.$
Authors: Shang-Yung Wang, Daniel Boyanovsky
Institution: University of Pittsburgh
Language: English
Subfield: Nuclear and High Energy Physics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1984539219